My name is David Lewis and I have now been working for The Phoenix Partners on and off during my academic holidays for three years. My first ‘mission’ was to go with Rachel Hargrave to London to help out with and observe a corporate video shoot for BP, since then I have been to BP once again as well as working in The Phoenix Partners office doing jobs for mainly the PR and Video Sales departments.

I feel that the experiences I’ve had here have been more relevant to my own ambitions than a lot of what I learned at school. Geometry can’t teach you how to deal with clients on the phone or in person; Knowledge of when World War Two started won’t show you how to write a press release or sales proposal and even the film course I do now at university cannot prepare you for the constraints of working to a ‘real world’ brief. However, working for The Phoenix Partners has shown me that a decent brain in your head and a willingness to voice your own ideas (when relevant) can take you a long way towards feeling comfortable in these situations.

The company itself had changed and grown a lot since I started both in terms of staff, with some leaving but even more now working here, and workload, with bigger and better projects now on their books. I never feel out of place here and enjoy the atmosphere that is created by people who are obviously more than just colleagues working together each day. The variety of jobs is such that I am still able to have creative input, which is important to me, but it has also shown me that you have to do the hard graft in order to achieve projects that are fun to work on. All in all working at The Phoenix Partners has always been educational, at times challenging, and never dull.