My name’s Sam I’m 24 and I’m from Bristol. Currently, I’m working at Trinity Community Arts, a music venue and community space in Old Market. At Trinity, I work as a Marketing Assistant, which allows me to bring a lot of creative skills in to a professional setting. I am really passionate about the arts, and particularly the cultural industry within Bristol – having grown up going to gigs, art galleries and everything else Bristol has to offer. I’m passionate about the local community in Bristol and would love to keep doing something that I feel is valuable to the community around me.
I was referred to Babbasa through Trinity to help support us with our long-term careers. Like many people, one of the key barriers to developing a career is getting that initial bit of work experience in your preferred area. Once you have a foot in the door, it is a lot easier to network with people within your desired industry, and to gain experience to add to a CV. I also feel that a barrier for a lot of people is having an understanding of what jobs are out there. There’s a lot of jobs that exist that I’d never heard of until fairly recently!
Babbasa helped initially with developing my skills to expand my CV and cover letter writing abilities. They recommended resources to help format a readable and professional looking CV, and taught me how to tailor my current experiences to fit a cover letter or a job I would be applying to. Even if they weren’t exactly what the job description was asking for, I was surprised at how certain changes to wording or focus could make experiences and skills from outside of work fit into a cover letter. I also gained professional and personal development training from Babbasa. This has been really useful in clearly mapping out what I want to achieve and breaking it down into manageable stages and thinking practically about the next steps that can be taken to achieve these goals.
I hope to develop a career working in the arts sector in Bristol – working for a company who’s ethics align with mine and I feel proud to be a part of. I’d also like to develop my own business and take the steps to expand this further. In addition, I’d love to do some charity work and spend some time working abroad if possible.
My advise to other young people is to think big about your ambitions – you’d be surprised how manageable your aims can be when you break them down into practical steps and get appropriate guidance for achieving them.
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