The Stables - World Class Music and Entertainment

The Stables receives many requests from school and individual student for work experience. The Stables is committed to offering a wide range of educational opportunities for young people, but as a busy music venue we can only offer a limited number of placements at selected times of the year. A Stables work experience placement lasts for 1 week and we are able to take 2 placements in Jan/Feb and 2 more in June/July.

We can offer office based and front-of-house work experience, but unfortunately not any backstage, technical, stage management, wardrobe or performance based experience. We do try to give a flavour of the full range of roles that are needed to keep a busy venue operating, including ‘front-of-house’ customer service. A typical week involves shadowing and assisting in tasks in a number of departments including Education, Marketing, Box Office, Programming, Shop, Café, Corporate events, Fundraising.

We want to focus our placement on those who we are best placed to help. This means those who are interested in pursuing educational, administrative or management careers in the arts, especially in the field of music. We understand that it is very difficult to be clear about your future career at this stage, but we want to make the best use of your time and ours, so if you feel strongly that you are interested in a performing, backstage or technical career we are not the best place for your work experience placement.

It is still important that you show an interest and commitment to music generally and that can have been through playing, performing or being involved in other ways. As we are likely to have more applications than places and so there is some competition for places, we need to make that as fair as we can. We have made the application process similar to applying to college or for a job. We hope that this is still a useful exercise to go through even if you are not successful in getting a place.

How to apply

Applications must be made on the form downloaded from http://www.stables.org/Learning/Work_Experience/Application_Form

Deadlines:

For Jan /Feb work placements 31^th October

For June/July work placements 28th February

If there are more applications than places a shortlist will be selected based on the quality of applications and evidence of an interest in music and a career in arts administration and management. Shortlisted applicants may be asked to have a short informal telephone interview or visit to The Stables before a place is confirmed.

Parents or guardians need to give permission on the form for the application to be made, and your school may have other forms and procedures for work experience placements that you will need to complete.

From Jan 2010 we may be discontinuing traditional secondary school work experience placement and developing a new series of work based learning projects for GCSE, A level and diploma students. News of these projects will be posted on our website.

Further Information

Students and their parents/guardians are responsible for their own transport Arrangements and ensuring that students are here for the agreed hours.

Each student will have an individual timetable for the week which will be agreed beforehand.

General office hours at the Stables are 10.00am until 6.00pm, but there is some

flexibility needed on both sides. If we have a suitable event during the week we like to offer the opportunity to shadow a daytime corporate event or evening performance. This may mean an earlier start or later finish on that day.

We do expect a commitment to placement and attendance at the agreed times but we will be flexible as we understand students may have commitments to unmovable daytime activities such as music grade exams and afterschool activities e.g. dress rehearsals, performances etc. In the case of illness or medical appointments we just ask that you inform us at the earliest opportunity in the same way that you would your school.

The Stables is committed to good Health and Safety and Child Protection Practice. Our policies are reviewed in line with current legislation. If you would like further information on our Child Protection and other policies please contact education@stables.org.

Work Experience