People across the advertising industry are coming together this week to help create fairer standards around internships amid concerns of exploitation.
Never Not Creative, a community focused on solving problems in the industry, creator Andy Wright is leading the charge to tackle the issue.
In partnership with student resource centre The Design Kids and General Assembly, Never Not Creative is hosting Designing the Future of Internships on Wednesday 27 March.
The event will feature talks, tips and a workshop to create a standardised internship program any employer, or intern, across the industry can use.
Wright has also created an open Google Doc for anyone across the industry to contribute to.
He is inviting everyone to share their ideas, opinions and queries around how much interns should be paid, what the structure of an internship should be and how to make sure this is beneficial for interns.
“There is regulation out there around internships but it’s not particularly well followed through,” Wright says.
“It leaves a lot open to interpretation. So we created the Google document to help create a standard for the industry to keep up with.”
Wright began looking into the issue of internships after hearing about the exploitation of interns, including long-term unpaid internships and interns only getting paid if their ideas were “bought” by a client.
Wright also raised concerns around the practice of recruiting interns during busy periods for businesses.
Details of the workshop can be found here.
Have an internship experience you’d like to share? Email mariam@yaffa.com.au.
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