Freddie Langdon-Daly is the Public Events and Exhibitions Manager at The Bishop’s Palace. I recently sat down to chat to Freddie about his role and the work he does behind the scenes.
How long have you been working / volunteering at the Bishop’s Palace, and what made you decide to join the team?
I have been working here since late Feb 2018, and I decided to join because it was a great opportunity to put my recent Postgrad in Curating to good use. While my background is largely in visual arts (and this is still a component of this role), it was also nice to branch out a bit into similar areas.
Describe the main activities of your role and what that involves?
Art exhibitions, the theatre programme, all family activities, the Garden Festival, Artisan Markets and Christmas at the Palace (the three flagship events), various concerts and performances – anything relating to events!
What is the most satisfying thing about working at The Bishop’s Palace?
My role at the Palace is almost ridiculously varied, there’s never a day where I’m doing the same thing as yesterday. I’m also given a lot of free rein to try out new ideas – I’m hoping to arrange an outdoor circus performance next year with a renowned troupe from Bristol!
How does your role and/or department fit within the overall operation of the Bishop’s Palace (eg. The role of the VOT team in monitoring site quality, or the impact of your work on visitor experiences etc)
The role of public events at the Palace, as I see it, is to both encourage memberships with events that are included with standard admission and generate income for the charity with ticketed events. Another role that things such as family days and art exhibitions play is to bring in new audiences who might not have otherwise thought to visit the Palace.
If you could give advice to people looking to work in heritage what would that advice be?
Look to build up your CV as fast as you can, ideally with a series of part time work placements. Always be thinking about how you can use any new task to your advantage when it comes to a job interview or application. Also – I found having a word document with complete responses to standard job application questions very helpful (e.g. Communication skills, Teamwork, Customer service), you can copy and paste them and save a lot of time when ploughing through job applications.
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