This position will be based in our Paddington, London office three days per week with a flexible schedule.

The selected candidate will have the opportunity to attend all Frontline Club events during the duration of the internship including film screenings, talks and media making workshops.

This position is ideal for someone who is seeking career experience and learning opportunities in the fields of marketing, journalism and film while working part time.

Responsibilities:

-Managing marketing campaigns to promote upcoming talks, workshops and film screenings
-Answering phone calls and taking bookings through our online box office
-Researching opportunities to promote our events and workshop programme to young audiences
-Occasionally assisting with tech and audience support during evening events and workshops
-Dealing with general email enquiries related to upcoming events
-Assisting with event management for our Annual Journalism Awards on 27 October 2016
-Editing and publishing content on the website

Required:

-Bachelor’s degree or practical experience in journalism, marketing, cultural studies, political science or another relevant field
-Familiarity managing social media accounts for an organisation, including Instagram, Twitter and Facebook
-One work placement or previous position in an office setting
-Ability to communicate professionally via email and over the phone
-Demonstrated interest in journalism, documentary film or politics
-Willingness to adapt to new responsibilities when needed
-Ability to work independently and manage time efficiently

Beneficial but not required:

-Experience as an audience assistant for public events
-Experience public speaking
-Experience volunteering or interning for a charitable organisation
-Self-teaching attitude and interest in acquiring advice directly from experts in the fields of journalism, film and multimedia

The successful candidate will receive a weekly stipend of £120 and support in seeking employment after their internship has finished. The deadline for applications is midnight on Friday 2 September 2016.

To apply please send a CV and cover letter to Julianne Rooney at julianne.rooney@www.beta.frontlineclub.com.

Membership Internship

We are looking for a part time intern for the membership department. This is an exciting opportunity for the right person to enhance their CV and get to know the Frontline Club and its members. You will be working closely with the membership coordinator in the club office two days a week. The right candidate would be organised, approachable, friendly, reliable and able to work both independently and as part of a team.

Please e-mail a CV and covering letter to: silje.rise@www.beta.frontlineclub.com before 27th January.

Documentary Internship

We are also looking for a part time intern to work in the events team with the documentary programmer three days a week. You should have a very good understanding of London, having lived here for at least three years and have an interest in documentaries and current affairs. Tasks will include marketing, film and funding research, and event assistance. 

Please email a CV and covering letter to sophia.loukaides@www.beta.frontlineclub.com before the 24th of January.  

 

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The explosion of the internship in the past 10 years has begun to raise some serious questions about the implications for a generation expected to work wage-free in order to move onto the career ladder.

Ross Perlin, an ex intern himself and the author of Intern Nation will be at the Frontline Club to take part in a panel discussion about internships and his investigation into a trend which, he argues, is destroying "what’s left of the ordered world of training, hard work and fair compensation".

This issue was highlighted in early February when it was reported that a selection of prestigious internships at major City firms, media outlets and PR companies were auctioned off to party donors at the Conservatives’ annual Black and White Party.

Are internships for the privileged, and to what extent are those professions where intern experience is compulsory now closed off young people from lower income families?

Or with no framework in place to protect their rights, is the internship a money-saving system for businesses, formalising the exploitation of young people by requiring them to do jobs that would otherwise be paid positions and work long hours without pay?

Join us at the Frontline Club to discuss the world of the intern and the culture of work.

Chaired by Martin Bright, political editor of The Jewish Chronicle and founder of New Deal of the Mind, an organisation which aims to boost employment in Britain’s creative industries. In 1996 he was appointed education correspondent at The Observer, where he also worked as home affairs editor, in 2005 he became political editor of the New Statesman, a job which he left in January 2009. 

With:

Ross Perlin, former unpaid intern and author of Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy, he is now gainfully employed researching obsolescing languages in China;

Fiona O’Cleirigh, freelance journalist and vice-chair of the London Freelance Branch of the NUJ.  She set up the NUJ’s Cashback for Interns campaign, to help unpaid media interns sue former employers for the National Minimum Wage.  The union has recently won its first intern’s National Minimum Wage case at London Central Employment Tribunal;

Andrew Scherer, marketing manager of internship agency Inspiring Interns, having started at the company as an intern and has seen almost 900 graduates find placements through Inspiring Interns. Currently completing a guide to internships to be published in the autumn.

Dupsy Abiola, founder and CEO of Intern Avenue, Oxford Alumni and former employed barrister. Intern Avenue hosts the world’s first Intern Directory™ and connects interns and employers by automatically matching them via their objective criteria.;

Dom Potter, co-founder of Internocracy, the youth-led social enterprise which works to lower the barriers and raise the bar in internships. Former intern he has since found work with the OECD, Involve and the Young Foundation. He is also a Trustee of TimeBank, a Fellow of the RSA and was Future 100 Young Social Entrepreneur of the year in 2009.

I should caveat these comments by saying I had one very instructive and worthwhile internship with a political think-tank for three months. I was given lots of autonomy and freedom to carry out a number of research-based tasks in a well-structured environment. My input was valued and my output measurable. In many ways it was an exemplar of what an internship scheme should offer. That it didn’t lead to a job was in part a reflection on the hollowed-out job market at the time [Winter 08/09] and my decision that the think-tank route was not one I wanted to pursue.

That was the diamond in the rough, however, with an additional total nine months intern experience – nine months that would have been better spent knocking my head against a wall, ad infinitum, for all the value I derived from them. The tasks would be dry and repetitive – transcribing someone else’s interview, updating spreadsheets that will consequently be left to gather dust, writing ‘profiles’ with no by-line or recognition, opening and sorting post, sitting on ‘reception’. And while some in the office(s) would be very cognisant of the fact you are doing work for free that they would otherwise be doing, others have treated me with little compassion or empathy. The relationship is grossly asymmetric.

Once I finish this latest internship at a magazine I doubt I will apply for any more unless I can be assured a meaningful and worthwhile experience. If I am to endure not being paid, I would at least welcome stimulating and challenging work that makes the commute, expense and endless hours stuck behind a desk tolerable. When that ‘work’ leaves you trapped in a cerebral prison you routinely question what value you’re deriving from the experience.

Are they the preserve of the privileged? I’m not so sure. I’ve known many people, far from flush with cash, who take unpaid internships while living at home for support. That might raise separate questions about the importance of geographical mobility and notions of independence and being self-supportive, but many do the same while working in London [assuming family lives close enough] given the prohibitive cost for many of the capital city. Perhaps the more appropriate question, as opposed to whether they are the preserve of the privileged, is whether there is much value to be gained from them at all and whether they should be subject to greater accountability and regulation.

I have no rights, no security, no leverage with which to defend my corner. When I leave someone else is lured in under the same guise as I was: the false hope of an exciting opportunity. In reality my typical experience has been characterised by dull, worthless, repetitive, thankless ‘work’. Some organisations know how to ‘play’ the system with a constant stream of interns and tasking them with the same work they really should be paying somebody for, be it part or full-time. I, for one, am grateful when this internship ends and the intellectual sclerosis can stop. Maybe this should form my handover notes to the next intern?

• The writer has asked to remain anonymous

We will be discussing internships at Internships: opportunity or cheap labour? on Wednesday, 8 June at the Frontline Club. Book here.

Tomorrow evening there is a screening of Revolution Uplo@ded  which looks at the global communication revolution that has helped ferment real revolts and pull down regimes across the Arab World. This event is hosted by BBC Arabic and will be followed by a panel discussion.

The week ahead sees the start of our ‘Recommends’ screening series, with Reprieve’s Clive Stafford Smith’s choice Fourteen Days in May, a documentary which charts the last two weeks of Edward Johnson’s life on death row. Friday’s screening of The Prosecutor documents the powerful story of Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the first chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court.

Next week we will be tackling some of the serious questions that arise from the explosion of the internship. EJF and Communications Inc will be screening Deadly Catch followed by a panel discussion on the growing problem of pirate fishing.