Today’s guest blog comes from Joseph Evenden, who has spent the week gaining work experience in the Mayor’s Office and Labour Group Office at City Hall.

My name is Joseph Evenden and I have spent a week’s work experience working with the Mayor’s Office and the Bristol Labour Group. The purpose of my placement was to learn and understand how Bristol City Council (BCC) functions and how it manages public issues throughout the city.

After taking the BCC induction courses I learnt about how the Mayor’s Office manages the Mayor’s diary and prepares for meetings and appointments he has coming up. This was really impressive to me as the members of the office worked incredibly fast and I learnt how important diary scanning is in the Mayor’s Office.

My main tasks for most of the week were related to understanding and summarising documents. These summaries are important for the officers and councillors as they may not have the time to read through a whole document and require it to be broken down into smaller sections so that the office can run efficiently. I really enjoyed the responsibility of this long term task.

The office environment was completely new to me and I had no idea what to expect when joining on work experience. But the people I met were really nice and by the end of the week I felt like part of the group. Now that I have been part of the environment I understand how flexible people in the office have to be and it’s really quite impressive.  People are constantly moving and never in one place for long, because of this I had to update them when I saw them as it could be hours before I saw them again.

While here on work experience I took part in a meeting inside the council chamber. During the meeting I saw two parties discuss planning permission for a university development which was interesting to see in the news the next day. The meeting gave me real insight into how political debate is put into real actions and how parties come to a conclusion.

I also watched an interview take place with a cabinet member and it will be interesting to see how a ten minute interview will be edited and presented on TV.

In conclusion I have really enjoyed my time here on work experience I have loved getting to know the people in the office and I feel that this has really set me up for the future.