With some members of Marble’s marketing team on furlough, we decided to take a look at what they’ve been up to and how they’ve been filling their time during lockdown.

History lessons and charity challenges

I’ve always been the kind of person who has to have at least one creative project on the go at once, so not being able to sink my teeth into a marketing task or work on an event brief at Marble HQ has made my life pretty quiet.

At the start of lockdown I started some art projects to fill my time, like building a ‘fairy garden’ in the woods near my house in Oxfordshire for the little ones to enjoy. After I’d run out of tree space (and paint!) I decided to ask my 9-year old cousin if she’d like some virtual History lessons…

And so ‘History with Hattie’ was born! We began by looking at women’s history as it was a mutual love of ours, so my first lesson plans were on Tudor Queens and the Suffragettes. Having built up my presentation skills in the Marble marketing department, I relished the challenge of building and designing lessons, and this went hand in hand with my passion for History.

The first hurdle was, inevitably, the technology. As I’m sure many teachers will vouch for, delivering lessons via Zoom isn’t the most ideal teaching environment and can create some space for distraction (microphone issues also seemed to be a recurring feature!) However, my student was a dream and we had a fabulous 10 weeks of History learning, delving into Ancient Greek mythology, Victorian portraiture, the dinosaurs, the trenches of the First World War, and more.

And after winding up for the summer holidays, I’ve taken on a new challenge: a 6-week psychology course! I had to reassure the rest of the marketing team that no, I won’t be able to read their minds when I return to the office, but hopefully I’ll be able to apply a little of the consumer psychology into my job when furlough is over.

Furlough has been a mix of emotions; I’ve missed working with the Marble team but I’m also hugely grateful for the time I’ve had to get stuck into other hobbies, lots of which I wouldn’t have done without it.

The start of furlough coincided with a charity challenge that nine uni friends and I had planned in aid of The Encephalitis Society. The aim was to cover the equivalent of the furthest distance between us and back, (from Teignmouth in Devon to Forres, Scotland) over 1 week; a total of 2003km. Not an easy feat for a group that are more often running to buy a bottle of wine from Tesco than running a 5k in the park. But we collectively completed the challenge each from our different hometowns, helped by the heatwave! It was great to have a real sense of purpose with a distance goal set each day, with extra motivation provided by the incredible cause. In the end we managed to triple our fundraising target which came as a big surprise.

Since then, I’ve got stuck into some online courses, some relevant to my role within Marble Music and some random! I completed a short course in Artist Management, which gave a useful summary of key areas of the music business, including licensing, touring and artist marketing. I’m halfway through a crash course in Digital Marketing and have just started one on Intercultural Studies: The Branding of Culture, which focuses on how ideas of culture are used in advertising to brand and sell products. I’ve also had a lot of fun playing around with free trials on Photoshop and the music production software Logic Pro X. I’m excited to hopefully apply some of these things when back at work!

Last but by no means least is knitting, which has been a constant feature of my lockdown experience – something I never thought I’d say. I’m ashamed to admit that I’m still on the same scarf that I started in March but I’m hoping to finish it in time for Winter.