Venue Manager
The Pierian Centre (conference & events centre)

Tina L

00:00:02 My name’s Tina L and I’m the centre manager at The Pierian Centre. The Pierian Centre is a conference centre that also does arts and music events. I do a bit of everything. I take bookings, I show people around and explain what we do and I also update the website and organise bigger projects as well when we do art exhibitions and things like that.

00:00:29 School was a mixed bag, really. I had a lot of good friends and I found some of the classes and some of the teachers just excruciating and I think that’s always the struggle of just getting through the parts that aren’t good. I suppose I was very relieved when I was able to give up maths and science and things like that that I didn’t enjoy at all but loved the more creative things. Loved doing dance shows and just drawing pictures and all that kind of thing.

00:01:09 During French A level I got pretty good at that and felt like it was something that I’d like to carry on with. I was kind of getting itchy feet thinking about leaving England and as part of the French degree you go away for the third year. So, the first two years really were just having a good time, if I’m really honest.

00:01:33 Just meeting people and actually I don’t regret that because I think that’s a big part of it. Then went off to Paris in my third year of uni, I’d arranged an internship at a gallery for when I got there but when I did get there, they’d had a big flood at the gallery and they didn’t need anyone at all. I think I took it quite lightly, really, and thought, “Well, ok then, let’s go and try to scrape together a CV in French,” and just traipsed around Paris for a few weeks with no money and no idea of what I was going to do and stumbled into a bead shop which looked very shiny and exciting from where I was.

00:02:13 And they gave me a job. I think I realised when I got back to university how lucky I’d been actually to be doing something a bit more down to earth and that actually my spoken French, my understanding of French was just miles ahead of a lot of people who’d had much more interesting jobs.

00:02:30 I think it was really exciting. I felt completely overwhelmed being somewhere I had no idea where I was. I needed a map at all times and, you know, I didn’t have anywhere to live, but in those situations I think you can be at your best sometimes and I, yeah, I was jittery and I was really tired and I was nervous about not finding anything. I was broke but it was really exciting. There was new stuff everywhere and that kind of unknown was quite cool.

00:03:05 I graduated and then I worked in a telephone help desk doing IT support. There wasn’t really a pre-laid plan for what job I wanted or what it was going to…where going to get me. I never really, I always just sort of took the next step as it came and I think for me it’s always a lot about where I want to live rather than what it is I’m going to do forever.

00:03:31 June who runs The Pierian Centre who I had worked for briefly years and years back called me and said, “I hear you’re sort of umming and aahing a bit and we’ve got a job going.” So, I thought, “Ok, why not start a new phase?” So, I came back to Bristol. There’s still no definite plan but I think that’s ok. I’m enjoying it.

ENDS