The Show Must Go On – (With The Help Of Ara Interns)

Andrea Marshall, a final-year student at the New Zealand Broadcasting School (NZBS), gained an insider’s perspective on this while working as a marketing intern for The Court Theatre – an opportunity that was made possible through Ara Institute of Canterbury’s formal partnership with the premier theatre company.

Throughout a 20-year long association with the Institute, The Court Theatre has provided internships for Ara’s National Academy of Singing and Dramatic Art (NASDA) students. Under the newly formalised three-year partnership, Ara students of all departments can enjoy the experience of interning at The Court, in areas including marketing, finance, music and design.

Marshall, who just completed her Bachelor of Broadcast and Communications (specialising in Radio), was one of the first students to benefit from this new aspect of the partnership.  “While at The Court I emailed stakeholder/supporter newsletters, helped with social media analytics reports and content creation, and created a couple of radio edits.”

While at the Court Theatre Marshall was able to expand upon her existing skills and teach the staff at The Court a thing or two as well. This is consistent with the learning pedagogies of Tuakana Teina, where the student becomes the teacher and the teacher becomes the student.

“In my degree I learnt about radio sales and surveys, so when I came to The Court I was able to suggest we use surveys to look at the listenership of different shows, which would inform us when buying ads. It was cool to pass on my little bit of radio insight!’”

She adds “At NZBS we had our own student radio station The Garage 96.1 and we were the ones selling advertising. Then at The Court Theatre we were the ones that were buying the advertising - I found it really interesting to see the radio industry from a different perspective.”

Now that Marshall has finished her degree, she is able to start pursuing her dreams of working in digital marketing for the radio industry.

“The good thing about the radio specialisation is that I had heaps of majors to choose from. So, I did digital and production, which means that I can expand my skills beyond radio. It's really cool that the degree gives you a lot of options when you graduate.”

Under the terms of the partnership, Ara students and staff will be able to hold exhibitions and other events for a variety of departments at The Court, while also looking forward to increased numbers of Ara students designing costumes, doing make-up, constructing sets and even providing catering.