Gaining Perspective: My experience as College Festivals Intern

August is an exciting month in Edinburgh with all the festivals happening in the city! This year, Edinburgh Futures Institute supported a number of events in the Edinburgh International Book Festival .?

In this blog, Rory Balázs Bánszki shares his experience joining a professional setting and supporting our festival events in his role as College Festivals Intern, working alongside our Culture and Community Director, Patricia Erskine .

About a week before I started my role as College Festivals intern at Edinburgh Futures Institute, I walked into a piercing parlor with a friend who asked: “Are you really going to get an eyebrow piercing just before you start your office job?” I replied: “Of course! They already hired me, so what are they going to do?” Ten minutes later, I walked out of the shop looking like everything my mother told me not to if I were to be serious about my career beyond university.

Despite my initial pronouncement of full confidence about my new role, I was actually feeling slightly worried about how my new colleagues would perceive me (and my new piercing!). But looking back at the start of my internship, I now feel silly about how afraid I was to meet my new colleagues.

My job as College Festivals Intern for the past 12 weeks at Edinburgh Futures Institute was very different from my usual role as a student of Chemistry. I found that sitting behind staff-only doors with swipe access, (and near the office coffee machine at that), was a truly luxurious circumstance for a simple, anxiety-ridden student like me. Without the power of a staff card, I would have been afraid to even use the publicly available microwaves in the building! My internship felt like I was getting to be with the ‘big kids’ and that I was transitioning into a young professional.

Before starting my internship, I was afraid that entering the office environment would come with having to change my appearance, tone down my queer identity, and just be a silent cog in the machine. I think this fear is something that a lot of my peers struggle with. ?

But as I embarked on my internship, I noticed some things that made me think that the workplace is changing for my generation, at least based on my own experience. For example, I was delighted to see how many of my colleagues are queer-presenting. ?I was also actively told by my line manager to go home during certain hours that I am not being paid to be in the office. I found comfort in noticing that there was space to express views and frustration about the University’s actions in response to the student protests (which were ongoing at the time of my internship).

Apart from getting to experience how it is to be in an office space, of course, I am incredibly grateful for all the work opportunities that I experienced as part of my internship. Through working alongside my line manager, Patricia Erskine, Head of Stakeholder Relations at CAHSS and Culture and Communities Director at Futures Institute, I learned all about organising engagement around festival events supported by the University.

I got to see Margaret Atwood in conversation, had a chat with Berlin and Hamburg-based artist Moshtari Hilal at our reception for her event Beautiful Rebellion, and attended this year’s writer announcement for the Future’s Library project, just to name a few of the wonderful culturally-enriching events I was able to partake in as part of my internship. I learned a lot about the work that goes on in and around festivals, about the intricacies of knowing who to invite and how to go about this, and the importance of providing the opportunity for people from different contexts to have a conversation with each other.

It has been such a transformative experience to explore the creative sector in Edinburgh through my internship. I was able to use my creativity, and felt that I made a lasting impact on ongoing projects. I finish my internship with the sense that the door to the world post-university is so much wider, and I am filled with optimism that despite the portrayed heteronormative atmosphere of office spaces, there is a place here for a queer boy with an eyebrow piercing.

Rory Balázs Bánszki

College Festivals Intern

Edinburgh Futures Institute