Employment and Education

Graduate Placements & Internships

Since 2019 Tramlines has offered 48 graduate paid work placements, including a four-week paid internship. The festival works closely with the Events Management Course at Sheffield Hallam University and University of Sheffield to offer a platform for young people in Sheffield, enabling them to build upon their skills, as well as gain insight and practical experience in the events industry.

Roles are across a variety of departments, including:

• Resident liaison
• Marketing
• Customer Service
• Event Management
• Operations
• Press

Graduates work closely with experienced members of the Tramlines team, taking on a variety of tasks in a fast paced and busy environment. Tramlines prides itself on giving hands on opportunities to graduates, allowing them to take full ownership and accountability for their work.

In 2022, we extended our partnership with University of Sheffield’s Journalism department, the Tramlines’ media team hosted work placement afternoon taster sessions across the weekend with a focus on engaging students from non-white ethnic backgrounds, part of a larger initiative to help encourage diversity within the accredited onsite media. Students gained vital and genuine experience in the field and were able to network with various onsite media outlets to strengthen their learning and future careers.

The media team also hosted tours which were attended by first and second year students in journalism and PR. Students were able to see the festival in action from a media perspective, this included visiting the outside broadcast team from BBC Sheffield and learning about their onsite activities at the festival.

Aimee, Customer Service Assistant “Tramlines 2021 has and will remain one of the most important and special events that I have worked on. Seeing everyone back together doing what they love and enjoying live performances again has been surreal and overwhelming. It has been refreshing to work with such a diverse and talented team, well done to everyone involved in the planning and delivery.”

Beth, Marketing Assistant “What an amazing experience I have had over the past week working on Tramlines Festival. I had the opportunity to be the Marketing assistant leading up to the event and on the show days.

This consisted of creating engaging content for the Tramlines Festival social media profiles, and seeing how the event is pieced together from all angles, from backstage to customer enquires. The social media content which I created throughout this week was reposted by the likes of The Kooks, Tom Walker and Dizzee Rascal!”

Joey, Event Assistant, “It was such a pleasure working on site as Event Assistant at Tramlines Festival the past week!The amazing team made my experience there fruitful, not to mention the things I’ve learnt and connections I’ve built throughout the past week.”

Waterbear

In 2022 and 2023 we partnered up with  the new music college Waterbear currently being developed on the site of the famous Gatecrasher Nightclub.

We’ll be working together to provide work experience for students at the college to gain work placement opportunities with the festival spanning festival preparation, stage management and marketing. Alongside the work placements, students will also get the chance to perform at Tramlines through the festivals ‘Apply to Play’ scheme.

GCSE Student Engagement

In 2019, Sheffield Hallam University and Tramlines collaborated with local secondary schools on a Marketing competition for GCSE Students. Schools from across the region took part in a 2 month project to create a marketing strategy for Tramlines, with the chance to win work experience at the event, plus entry to the festival once their work experience was completed. 

The brief was: “How would you drive ticket sales to a 16-18 year old audience from the South Yorkshire region, using low cost marketing options?” The students presented their ideas to a panel of judges including representatives at Sheffield Hallam and the Tramlines team. 

The aim of this project is to create a flagship activity for the marketing subject group, to engage students in a real-life marketing brief and give them a flavour of the industry. This has been a great opportunity for students to get some hands-on experience and develop their communication skills and creativity. 

The winning students Isobel Ledger and Alice Fletcher, said: “It was definitely valuable; meeting and pitching to an expert panel really encouraged us to make the most of this opportunity. We were able to develop our own ideas and receive feedback. We enjoyed shadowing two backstage interviews with the artists and BBC Look North and really enjoyed the experience at the Festival.”

Unfortunately Tramlines has not been able to continue the flagship activity due to the pandemic. More news coming over the next few months!

College and University Lectures

In 2018 & 2019 the Tramlines Press team worked closely with Forge Media’s Journalism department, various mini-projects were undertaken to ensure students can gain a real insight into what it takes to work within the world of event press and journalism. 

The pandemic meant we could not work face to face with students, so throughout 2020 the Press team has held mini quarterly conferences with students, a Q&A space for students to speak to the Tramlines Press team and use evidence for reports and assignments. 

Tramlines’ Operations director, Timm Cleasby, provides annual talks for The Sheffield College Music Technology Course. The talks provide information and insight to the events industry for 16-18 year olds who are currently exploring and deciding on career opportunities.

Volunteering Scheme

Each year Tramlines works with local Volunteer managers to offer students, graduates and the local community the chance to gain experience and insight in working on a festival site.

Volunteers work alongside organisers and ticket companies whilst problem solving in high energy environments.
Over 100 roles are offered every year, in exchange for completed shifts the volunteers will gain entry to the festival.

Our volunteering team manages the wristband exchange each day, the role is heavily customer focused and allows team members to work on customer service experience whilst working alongside the gates management team to get everyone into the festival, one of the most important jobs across the weekend!

If you’d like to know more about Volunteering at Tramlines, or would like to get involved, head to our volunteering page here.