Alongside our colleagues at The Blair Parntership, Pottermore offers a pioneering work experience programme for students.
Together with The Blair Partnership, we’re proud to offer a weeklong work experience programme for students aged 15 – 17, and the opportunity to step into the role of a literary agent.
The programme runs twice a year, during the Easter and Summer holidays, is completely remote and takes place over Microsoft Teams. Colleagues from The Blair Partnership and Pottermore lead webinars from 10 am – 5pm from Monday to Friday on a range of subject matters, from international rights, legal and contracts, marketing and royalties to product development and digital publishing.
Outside these sessions are periods of teamwork where students, split into groups at the start of the week, choose which of the three author submissions they’d like ‘to represent’. The submissions are genuine projects from The Blair Partnership clients and range from children’s books to fascinating non-fiction. Across the five days, students will make decisions and create a publishing plan for their chosen project. On the final day, it’s all about focussing hard to hone their pitches ahead of presenting to a panel of judges from across both businesses.
Throughout the week each team is supported by two members of staff who act as mentors, answering questions and acting as a trial audience for the presentations. We all enjoy taking part and supporting the groups throughout the week, there’s even some friendly, internal competition between the mentors!
Don’t just take it from us though, previous participants have fed back that they ‘have learnt so much throughout this week! It was amazing learning about a field that I’m really passionate about and love’. Another said, ‘The work experience was absolutely amazing, and I’m sad that it’s over, however, I feel much more knowledgeable about this career path, and publishing and I’m looking forward to seeing where it could take me in the future’.
The dates for upcoming work experience weeks are promoted on our LinkedIn page, as well as on The Blair Partnership website so keep your eyes peeled if you, or someone you know, would like to take part!
