Article written by Natali Lekka, www.worldsofwords.com, Festival Communications Volunteer
Nadine Wilson was in the final year of her BA in Modern Languages (Japanese and Spanish) at Newcastle University when she found herself facing a dilemma familiar to many students: what was she going to do next?
With languages offering such broad, transferable skills, the possibilities felt endless. Nadine knew she wanted a career where she could use her languages, travel and cultural knowledge but she also recognised that she lacked practical work experience. That’s when she decided to apply for an internship with Express Yourself: North East Festival of Languages 2025. Her enthusiasm landed her a work experience placement with International Newcastle Chief Executive Officer and Festival Co-ordinator, Declan Baharini, who worked closely with Nadine to support her placement.
During her 6-month internship with the Festival, Nadine created social media content to promote the Festival across X, facebook and instagram. She also supported the in-person Welcome to Japan event for schools with The Japan Society in March 2025. It was during her internship that she discovered a new passion for marketing, an industry that, as she describes it, is all about “talking to different audiences and has the potential to be very international”.
Nadine Wilson graduation – Newcastle University
Nadine, BBC’s newest Growth Marketing Coordinator
Nadine had also been passionate about films and TV dramas from a young age, so she began exploring opportunities to work in the television industry. Following her graduation in the summer of 2025, she had a short stint at ITV and then applied for and secured her dream role at the BBC.
It quickly became clear just how valuable her experience with the Language Festival had been in helping her land the position.
Her interviewers told her that her CV stood out and that her linguistic experience, travels abroad and her volunteer work at the Language Festival made her both memorable and a strong candidate for the role. They were particularly impressed by her social media experience and the coordination skills she developed during the internship.
Moreover, the BBC’s core mission “to inform, to educate and to entertain” aligns closely with the ethos of the Language Festival, so Nadine feels her internship was the ideal stepping stone for her. She now works in the Customer Relationship Management team writing push notifications and emails for BBC iPlayer, BBC Sports, BBC News and BBC Sounds, skills she developed while crafting social media captions for the festival.
The blog she wrote for the festival about how languages changed her life further helped her showcase her writing skills.
Looking ahead, Nadine hopes to stay at the BBC. Auntie Beeb is after all a globally recognised organisation. She is particularly interested in the 80-20 scheme available to BBC employees, where staff spend 80% of their time in their own department and use the remaining 20% (one day per week), to shadow other teams.
Ultimately, Nadine aims to gain more experience and move to a more international department such as the BBC World Service or the Asian Network where she’ll be able to make greater use of her languages and cultural knowledge.
Congratulations to Nadine! It was wonderful to be able to offer Nadine this opportunity and I was very impressed with her dedication and work to promote and support our 2025 Festival. It’s inspiring to see how her internship with Express Yourself: North East Festival of Languages has opened so many exciting doors for her!
We are offering more undergraduates from both Newcastle and Northumbria Universities the opportunity to gain work experience with the Festival of Languages in 2026 and I hope that they too will find this helpful for their future careers.
Declan Baharini, Festival Co-ordinator