Stewarding for jeremy's Symposium Project

Aim: To aid in the movement of equipment, safety of the performance space and organisation of the audience.

Objectives: Overlook the performance to insure everything goes according to plan. We need to monitor the doorways and floors for object obstruction and understand what to do in case of a fire or other hazard, e.g. disabled people last out within a fire evacuation as they could cause obstruction. We also need to monitor the audience and help with any problems they may encounter. Recording the performance was also one of our objectives.

The 1st year of my course has come to an end. All the hard working has payed off with good results. I have managed to organize myself and keep a working routine. Now there is time for rest and summer fun but I don't want to have too much fun and slip out of my working pace. Jeremy (Lecturer) has helped me and other students stay on track by asking if we were interested in some work experience for his Symposium project.

Jeremy needed a few students to Steward for his project held at the Dartington College of Arts on the 21st of July 2010. The speakers attending were diverse and had a variety of skills and knowledge to share with the audience. The symposium started at 10am and ended at 4am. Jeremy asked for the stewards to be at the working space for 8am to help set up the technical equipment and to be trained within the health and safety involved within the job role of stewarding.

The training was very useful as we could apply what we had learnt to other jobs in the future. We learnt what was in order if there was a fire. Evacuating people from the building, The difference between fire extinguishers and what to do in case of an accident. We also were trained to spot obstructions and how to deal with problems that could potentially make a fire evacuation harder or unsafe to deal with. These skills will always come in handy within any type of performance.

The image above shows roughly what we our jobs involved within the workplace and the names of the different speakers we got to meet. The microphone roving was quite interesting as some people were shy to speak on the microphone within the audience. The moving of the equipment before the speeches was very basic. I enjoyed the role of doorman, greeting the guests and speakers. Each guest had to sign in using a simple form at the entrance to the building. The best part of the experience for me was using the camera to film. Jeremy specifically asked that we paused the camera after each speech to limit the need for editing. Using the camera was interesting because i learnt how panning the camera helped keep view of the speakers whilst they were walking around the stage.

Overall i enjoyed the whole experience. I gained some valuable skills within stewarding and also got to learn about different projects going on within Devon. There was lots of information on a variety of different subjects ranging from Arts to the awareness of disabilities such as dyslexia, dyspraxia, autism etc. I would like to find some more work within stewarding as it could potentially be a career to look into within the future.

Hours worked: 8 hours