This week I came to London Swimming for 1 week of work experience.

 

The week started out meeting Colin at the offices in Lambeth, with an induction along with new member to the team Richard Bradford. We were taken step by step through the strategy for swimming in London boroughs. I never realised quite how much business went on behind the actual swimming (finance, planning, strategy etc)

 

Tuesday saw a nice early start to meet Yvette on a trip up to Nottingham. The day was spent filming interviews for a new volunteers’ DVD, which is to be sent out to clubs and inform them of volunteers’ programmes. I can see how the information will be really useful for clubs.

 

Mid week I set off to Barking and Dagenham to meet Bastien and get an insight into her project management work with the local councils. The day began with an introduction followed by stretching my brain for ideas about how to teach swimming through actions and no words. In the afternoon I was taken through every aspect of Bastien’s job and visited the local swimming pool, to see how they were going to be improving their facilities and accessibility. 

 

Thursday I was in Islington with Sarah. I attended an interview about the situation of swimming in schools. I found this meeting very interesting as much of it related to my A Level PE course.

 

The week closed with a final trip out to Islington, where I met Annabel. I spent the morning criticising (constructively), the British swimming website, whilst looking at other swimming related websites for inspiration for improvement. After a delicious lunch, I sent out to an extremely large pile of forms for free swimming lessons in the summer and became very familiar with time consuming work many must adhere to!

 

As a club swimmer and swimming teacher I thought I knew quite a lot about what happens. Apparently I don’t! This very enjoyable and insightful week taught me a lot more about what goes on behind the scenes at London Swimming. Currently I am looking at university applications. Talking to employees this week was really helpful for this and for future employment ideas.

 

Thank you to everyone who took the time to show me their job and to London Swimming for taking the trouble to organise the week for me.