A month ago you might have seen the Folksy team mention a new PR intern, well that is me, Kate. My one month internship at Folksy is drawing to a close now so I am writing this guest post for Frankly to tell you about my month.

To give you a quick background, I completed a degree in French and Italian and a Primary PGCE but by the end of the course, I knew the primary teaching path wasn’t for me. I wanted to gain work experience in a different sector before jumping in and applying for jobs. Knowing how much I enjoy being creative (from painting to baking to learning to sew) and anything geeky related to IT, I emailed Folksy to enquire about work experience. I felt well-matched to Folksy and its values and was delighted when they agreed and let me enter the magical land of Folksy HQ…

The Internship

 My internship involved working on a variety of tasks including creating new Pinterest boards, working with magazine journalists and contributing to Folksy’s Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds. One of my favourite things was seeing the reaction of the community after I’d written a post. I love the way there is this great creative community linked together online where people can share their work, ideas and opinions instantly and connect with other like-minded people. It was great to see behind the scenes and find out how a small team of developers, designers and PR people work together to maintain the website, use social media and provide support to buyers and sellers via the forums, all powered by a quirky teapot, a hard working coffee maker, a big biscuit tin and A LOT of laptops.

My Folksy Favourites

I have recently started learning to sew and fell in love with Canny Belle’s Ouch PinCushion which has been a fun addition to my gradually expanding sewing box. I am in awe of skilful crochet so I also treated myself to a one of these dainty apple cosies by One Churchills Green, and if I ever learn to knit, I will definitely be purchasing one of these Croft House knitting patterns by Hand Knitted Things – it looks good enough to live in! In terms of inspiration, I was stunned by these beautiful painted wedge boots by iDK. You can smell the fresh mountain air just by looking at them.

Future plans

I have learnt a lot about IT, PR and Social Media  from my internship and enjoyed doing something completely different to my previous roles in the education sector. I was inspired by the work of the artists and craftspeople who sell on Folksy, so I plan to continue trying out new arts and crafts and document them on my blog The Cosy Creative. I’ve also had an idea of how to combine my love of arts and crafts with my love of languages and cultures, so I have just started working on that. I highly recommend doing an internship at Folksy, and like me, you don’t need to be fresh out of university for it to be beneficial.

Folksy currently offer an internship for people  looking to gain experience in the IT sector. If you are interested and can travel to their office in Sheffield, send them an email alongside your CV to James@Folksy.co.uk.