Rachel Kinchin
Rachel Kinchin - Marketing Officer, at a recent awards ceremony.
BA Journalism, Film and Broadcasting alumnus Rachel Kinchin explains how the BA degree is helping her to succeed in her current role.
Course Studied: BA Journalism, Film and Broadcasting
Graduation Year: 2002
Current Employer: The Riverfront Theatre and Arts Centre
Position: Marketing Officer
Briefly describe your current position.
I am Marketing Officer at The Riverfront Theatre and Arts Centre in Newport, South Wales.
The Riverfront is a new and vibrant arts venue and has been open for just over four years. It is growing from strength to strength, having firmly established itself as an important arts venue in Wales and beyond.
I line manage the marketing team and my job consists of planning all seasonal campaigns to sell shows from any e-marketing activity to planning advertising through to managing the copy, design and print of the seasonal brochure and press and public relations. There is also an audience development aspect to my job.
What is the best thing about your current position?
I love working in a creative space that enriches the local community by providing people with access to the arts.
Managing a small team of arts marketers is really exciting and pulling together all of the seasonal campaigns we put together to sell the shows and longer term plans to develop an arts audience in Newport and the surrounding areas.
I particularly like the diversity of my role as every day is different so it keeps me constantly challenged and interested in my job.
How well did your JOMEC education prepare you for your current position?
I think my JOMEC education helped me hugely. When I did the course, you were expected to do a lot of your own planning and research which is invaluable to my role now. I don’t think someone could do my job well without a degree and I think I do it particularly well because of the degree I did.
Learning about press and press relations as well as how to write press releases has helped me enormously as PR and press is a huge part of my job, from organising press nights to getting coverage for different performances and events within the local, regional or national press. Studying film modules has allowed me to write confidently about film and understand film audiences.
What did you enjoy most about studying here?
I loved the film and cinema based modules and analysing and discussing Media texts, films and other texts/narratives has helped me get where I am now.
Reading and analysing narratives can apply to any artform and I think I almost instinctively do this now when watching music, theatre, film etc.
Why did you choose JOMEC/Cardiff as a place to study?
It was by far the best course available covering what I wanted to study.
What are your plans and hopes for your professional future?
My love of film developed hugely whilst in university and I am still very much into Indie, Arthouse and World cinema and have been to many festivals around the UK and Europe, as well as doing courses in Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff. I am also in an all-female choir, along with a JOMEC friend who I met in the enrolment queue on my first day of university!
My long-term dream is to have my own small, Independent venue with a veggie café where I’d like to programme Independent and off-the-beaten-track film, art, music and performance. Watch this space!