Written by Annabelle, a year ten student from one of our secondary schools.
Before this week, I could not have imagined how valuable this experience would be to me and my perspective of what I wish to do in the future. Last week (16th-20th March 2026) I was placed with the managers of the Burnley.co.uk place brand team and the communications team at Burnley Council. They have all been consistently supportive and kind to me throughout the duration of my placement, putting me at ease and helping me to get stuck into the job and all it has to offer. I have thoroughly enjoyed all the tasks that I have been set throughout the week and have found them all extremely useful in terms of developing my skill set and giving me a taste of working life.
On Monday, my first task was to contribute some ideas to the Burnley Lifestyle Magazine to make it more inclusive to a younger audience such as myself. I contributed some useful ideas, one of which I built upon later in the day and wrote the entry to an article about. I also went into Burnley town centre to capture social media content at the new Music Room in the library and the book stall on Burnley Market, and I then helped to post an Instagram reel based upon the bookstall at the market (this reel ended up gaining over 10,000 views!). On this day I developed my research skills and learned how to effectively capture people’s attention on social media.
My second day was certainly just as busy! Firstly, I created another Instagram reel, this time unsupervised, on the Burnley Music Room. This got posted on the Burnley.co.uk social media pages, which I was very proud of. I then attended a meeting for Burnley’s Year of Culture2027. This gave me the opportunity to listen to the amazing things that organisations in Burnley are arranging, and it was interesting to see how everyone helped one another out and made suggestions to work together. After that, I attended a small meeting with the branding team where they were planning for an upcoming awards event, I found it valuable to see how they communicated in the workplace and how well they worked together as a team.
On my third day I had my first real taste of journalism as I went off to collect quotes from local charity shops on my own. I was very nervous about this at first but quickly got used to talking to people as I realised that they were all passionate about what they did and were more than happy to help. I also had an extremely interesting talk about my future and have come out of it with a more solidified image of what I would like to do in the future, and I intend to carry out more work experience with different organisations in the summer. I also had the pleasure of attending a meeting regarding a press release with the communications manager. Finally, I went to OneTwoThree, which is a creative space used for art exhibitions and is a hub for community and creativity. I found it fascinating to see what had been done with the space and toexperience some of the stunning architecture that Burnley is home to.
On Thursday I attended a meeting at Down Town, an organisation that supports the community by providing discounted food and clothes to those who need it. The team there were discussing their vision for the programme and what they were doing to achieve it. I found it interesting to see how much they were helping the community and to hear about how far they’d come in terms of the foundations of Down Town. I was also given a tour of the building and given an overview of how everything works. Later on in the day, I also posted my charity shop post onto Facebook, which is doing exceedingly well and has even gained comments from the charities that I featured in it! I then finished off the day by doing some research on a fashion designer who is being featured in an upcoming lifestyle magazine.
On my final day of work experience I attended the Digital Burnley 2030 Smart Future event at Burnley College. I enjoyed hearing about the impacts that modern technology is having on businesses in Burnley and peoples’ opinions on subjects such as AI in the workplace. This event also improved my confidence as it was taking place in a setting that I am not accustomed to normally.
Overall, my favourite part of this week has been having the opportunity to write about such interesting things, and to learn new skills that will be useful in the future. I have enjoyed finding out how different the workplace setting is to the school one and now feel much more confident in my aspirations in the future and how I plan to achieve them. This week has certainly confirmed my interest in journalism, and I now feel motivated to go on to do this professionally in the future.
Post expires at 10:28am on Wednesday August 19th, 2026