#molly scarborough jobhunt career arts youngpeople

[artsdevco-blog]

We spoke to Molly Scarborough who is coming to the end of her Internship with b-side under the creative employment programme. We found out about Molly’s creative journey so far and how important volunteering has been in the progression of her career.

Let’s start from the beginning:

Molly has always been creative and studied Art, Drama and Dance at GCSE level whilst studying music before and after school. Her real interest at the time lay in dance and Molly would go out of her way to get involved in dance opportunities, classes etc. When it came to college choices Molly chose two theatre courses and it’s here where she fell into the world of Theatre. After college Molly studied Theatre Performance at the University of Chichester.

During her three years as a university student Molly discovered she loved organising things and events management, she got stuck in with loads of different opportunities including volunteering for the university gallery and running other events in the theatre department. So… when she graduated she decided to gain more experience in this side of the arts.

Throughout the whole chat Molly stressed how important volunteering has been in the development of her career. Places Molly has volunteered include the following:

Music events

Theatre Festivals

Arts Festivals

Music Festivals

Galleries

From these experiences Molly has developed a voluntary role into a paid role where she volunteered for a music event three years running; she started as a volunteer, became a volunteer supervisor and then gained a paid role as a Volunteer Coordinator. Molly still draws upon ALL these experiences and has learnt to apply different skills and old experiences to new ones.

Molly began her job hunt in the September after university (after her trip to Edinburgh Fringe Festival where she flyered for a producing company, was a tech assistant for a one man show and volunteered at Forest Fringe). She applied for a job a day for 3 months equating to over 100 jobs. She never applied for anything that didn’t meet her personal aims and morals in order to ensure she would gain a role that would enable career development. Whilst job hunting, Molly volunteered at a local Arts Café to keep herself busy.

Unfortunately Molly didn’t have much ‘job hunting luck’ so she went away for a couple of weeks, and came back in the new year with a fresh and determined mind ready to find a job. It was during this time that Molly registered un-employed and this opened up another door! By officially registering unemployed Molly was able to apply for something called the Creative Employment Programme which led to a 6 month internship with b-side!

A side note:

By living in Southampton Molly found that there weren’t many local jobs, they were all in London so naturally she spent her time applying for London based jobs. Unfortunately it appears that if you’re not living in London you will be turned down by a London based job. She was relieved to be offered the opportunity with b-side and wasn’t afraid to relocate from Southampton to Portland.

Top tips from Molly:

Be prepared to go wherever the job goes. Although contradictory to this (apologies) still have merit to where you’re from. Maybe it’s a case of going away, gaining experience and knowledge and then returning back to where there weren’t opportunities and creating them - why not!

Go into any temporary role like an internship or voluntary role knowing your aims, objectives and more importantly outcomes.

Throw yourself into things, sometimes they may be out of your comfort zone but even from not liking a job you can still gain valuable experience.

 Keep trying, keep going.