Name: Emma Parker

Job title: Box Office Manager

Department: Warwick Arts Centre

My job involves…

Essentially I manage the Box Office team of 15 and as a team we look after customer service for Warwick Arts Centre. I then prep events to go on sale, manage the ticketing system, handle department admin and welcome schools through the doors – the list is endless and it's a varied workload. Every year, we welcome over a million people through our doors, have more than 980 performances a year and have 804 showings of 180 films, so the Box Office is always pretty non-stop!

But during the Christmas week I…

Nothing really changes to be honest! We are open every day except Christmas Day and Boxing Day, with our film programme running throughout the year and our Christmas show often having three performances a day. Christmas is as busy as any other time of year, but with more biscuits than usual being consumed in the Box Office!

Working during the festive season is unique because…

Christmas at Warwick Arts Centre is always good fun. Because of the Christmas show we always have a foyer full of excited children anticipating what they will be seeing in the theatre or chatting enthusiastically about what they have just seen. There’s a great atmosphere throughout the building, the decorations look great, the Christmas tree outside always makes you feel festive when you finish a shift and we get lovely cards and chocolates as a thank you from some of our regular customers. We even get to finish a few of the smaller jobs that have sat on our ‘list of things to do‘ pad for a few weeks, if we’re lucky.

My most memorable moment from working over Christmas has been…

The children are what really make Warwick Arts Centre magical at Christmas. This year, a local primary school sent us loads of hand-drawn Stick Man thank you cards all wrapped up beautifully in a bow! It really does warm your heart knowing that the children have enjoyed a performance. We get many schools here whose pupils may never have seen a theatre show, so memorable moments happen when you see them head out of the theatre doors with huge smiles on their faces.

The most challenging part of working over Christmas is…

When everything else closes – we stay open, so I suppose it’s the worry that if anything goes majorly wrong then all we have is access to emergency out of hours contacts. Thankfully, there’s been no Christmas meltdowns to date. Other than that, it’s eating too much chocolate and deciding which Christmas earrings to wear!

People may not realise but …

It sounds strange, but sometimes people may not realise we are still open when campus has closed for Christmas. We are open 362 days a year whether it’s term time or not, and there are always shows to see.