Full programme announced for WildPhotos 2024
WildPhotos is a one-day photography symposium, packed with talks from the world’s top wildlife and conservation photographers, taking place at the Bristol Aquarium on Sunday 13th October 2024.
WildPhotos is a one-day photography symposium, packed with talks from the world’s top wildlife and conservation photographers, taking place at the Bristol Aquarium on Sunday 13th October 2024.
We’re just under two months away from the biggest global gathering of natural world storytellers, and today, we’re giving you an exclusive sneak peek into the Festival programme.
“I’m the media intern for Wildscreen ARK. I manage social media for the ARK project from designing cool graphics, writing engaging copies, making cute animal posts to researching about different species for every week that you see on our Instagram.”
1. Tell us a bit about your role!
So I’m the Communications and Administration Assistant at Wildscreen. Basically my main responsibilities are marketing and communicating what we do at wildscreen, I’ll do social media, graphic design, copy writing, newsletters and sort of the overall marketing strategy for the organisation. Basically any time we need to communicate anything to our audience, that’s where I step in.
2. How did you get to where you are today?
I studied Media Culture and Communications at the University of West England in Bristol. It was quite a broad degree, but that’s where I really got to exercise my love of writing. I got to do the more media side as well like photography, photoshop, all that fun technical side, but it was the theory I found most interesting. I found this job after I graduated through the Kickstarter program, a universal credit scheme. They run lots of really cool job opportunities you can only really access through being on universal credit and that’s how I found Wildscreen.
3. What motivates you?
So I think the main thing that really motivates me within this role is the team. We’re a really small team and I feel like we have a really strong work ethic so what motivates me is us all working together and having that positive vibe around the office. Especially since we work in events I think that sort of team energy is so important.
4. If you could change one thing about the natural history industry, what would it be?
I think inclusivity is an obvious one. We need to make sure we’re opening up positions and roles to people of all demographics. I don’t want to say it’s been elitist in the past but it could definitely be more inclusive than it is at the moment. And luckily, we’re slowly starting to see that happen now.
5. What are your career goals?
I’d like to work in production, so a great thing about this role is that we get to do all these live events and work with great production crews. But thats definitely something I’m leaning more towards in the future, live events within television or theatre.
6. Favourite moment working at Wildscreen?
My favourite moment is definitely at the Wildscreen Festival last year and it was the Panda Award ceremony. That was just a really exciting moment. We were nearing the end of the festival week and it was just a really nice memory after all the awards for us all to celebrate and kind of appreciate all the hard work we’d put in together. And yeah, it was just a really fun night where we could just enjoy ourselves and our hard work.
7. What’s your favourite story from nature?
There was this documentary about dolphins narrated by David Tennant and there was this really interesting behaviour that they’d picked up on with the dolphins where they were getting high off pufferfish. So the dolphins were squeezing the pufferfish which would release this endorphin when it puffed up and they were seemingly getting high off it and passing it around from one to another. But they wouldn’t hurt the pufferfish, which I really appreciated and then the pufferfish would kind of just, a bit traumatised, swim off at the end and he’d be okayish.
8. Describe working for Wildscreen in three words!
Funny. Empowering. Busy.
9. If you could turn into any animal for a day, what would you be?
Definitely an otter so I could just lay in a river with my pet rock and just float away with no worries, holding hands with my otter friends.
10. What’s a fun fact about you?
I like to do stick and poke tattooing for myself and for my friends.