October, I began an internship at Bang media. I found this opportunity on UAL creative opportunities, I was honestly surprised to hear back from them as I had been struggling to find new placements. Bang media is a specialised entertainment news service and publishing platform operated by BANG Showbiz. Working at Bang felt very different to my time at Labrum as if they were on two completely opposite ends of the glamour spectrum. I had become used to working in 180 Studio offices surrounded by the fashion industry people and other creatives. In contrast my work experience at bang felt less structured, and I was often left to manage my own time and direction.
At Bang, my job role as “Digital Content Assistant” initially involved supporting and managing the company’s social media presence across X, Instagram and Youtube. They were very eager for me to bring my perspective as a young person to their online content. I started by looking over the existing content and making notes of any issues I saw. I identified specific issues such as the use of unengaging background audio and the overuse of text.
However, I soon realised that I had limited creative control, the team wanted me to work with the pre-existing content from Bang Premier and be the person to upload it to the different social media platforms. I found this challenging at times as the issue wasn’t the execution but the content itself. This meant that even after I applied my design and social media knowledge, it was difficult to produce numbers the team hoped for. I wanted to create engaging content that I knew people would stay to watch but as I wasn’t the one creating it this was difficult.
Instead of letting this get me down, I shifted my focus to what I could control. I experimented with different captions using my prior course knowledge of call to action techniques. With some posts I would ask the audience a question to try and get conversation going in the comments and I started consistently putting links to Bang premier urging people to click to read the full story. Despite the lack of creative control, I did see improvements of the views across platforms especially on Instagram and X.
I often also felt unsure of how to contribute meaningfully without clear instruction. This made me feel frustrated at myself sometimes and unproductive. I also helped by using my knowledge of up and coming artists to help pull together new potential client lists. This experience made me realise how important strong creative direction is within a team.
Throughout October I continued working at Labrum supporting them through the post show period. I worked with the team to put on a pop-up sample sale to try and shift some old stock. I was able to see where garments were stored and how quickly temporary retail spaces were set up and transformed. This challenged my perception of fashion being purely glamorous, revealing the physical labour and organisation needed behind the scenes. Working at the sample sale also allowed me to develop my customer service skills. I interacted with clients and tried my best to show my sales skills to impress the rest of the team.
I was also given an independent task to compile press coverage from the show. I had to collect headlines and articles that featured Labrum and create a document so that the team could use this for future reference. This allowed me to see how the show was received by the public, I was understanding more and more how that the success of a brand is ultimately proven by its media representation. Being given this task initially felt daunting as I knew it would be seen by the whole team including Foday, but having worked on the look book in September I had already begun to overcome the fear of working on tasks independently. This time instead of asking Aneta, my manager, every few minutes if I was doing it correctly I used my own judgement to complete the task and then asked for feedback at the end. I chose to break the task down into sections, first doing my research and then putting it all into one document after. The structure that I created for this document was later continued by the team even after I had left which made me realise I had actually left some sort of lasting positive impact.
Aneta told me that the document I created was “really clear and useful” and would be a good example to show other interns in the future. Hearing this verbally boosted my confidence within the studio and made me believe in the power of using my initiative. This is something that I really want to try and take forward into my final year, especially when it comes to working on my final major project.
Outside of my placements, I had my work exhibited at the V&A as part of a summer course project I did titles ‘A Moment in Time’. Seeing my work in such an establishment was lovely and gave me a creative boost as I had not had the time to do much photography recently as I had been so busy.
Overall October really taught me the spectrum of creative environments. While Labrum felt very structured and at times stressful Bang highlighted the challenges which can arise without direction. I don’t want to be spoon-fed but leaving me to my own devices so early on in a placement was very daunting. Although I found parts of this frustrating, it did push me to think more independently and reflect on the type of working environments that would best suit me post university.