Niamh Ní Iceadha, CEID Class of 2023
Nationality: Irish
Current Position:
Education Coordinator, Global Action Plan Ireland.
Project Manager, Ballymun is Brilliant Project
My current position is a very varied one, which is one of the reasons I love it. I started with Global Action Plan, an environmental education charity based in Dublin, exactly one month after I finished my Masters in Edinburgh.
I began as an education officer, mainly focused on running environmentally focused workshops in schools and for community groups and businesses.
For the past two years I have also been the project manager for Ballymun is Brilliant, a creative climate arts project that aims to engage the community of Ballymun ( a disadvantaged inner city community in Dublin) in issues of climate change through using creative approaches. This has been my dream project, as art is my main passion outside of work.
I am the type of person who enjoys lots of different types of tasks, which also made this role perfect for me, as it involved not only project management, but also event planning, arts liaison, hiring, community work, admin, project evaluation, social media and running arts workshops. I have also had the opportunity to create 3 community murals. It’s lucky that I like to be busy!
CEID was an absolutely wonderful experience for me. Not only were the staff helpful, supportive, and actually interested in engaging with their students, feeling part of the CEID community was so unique and something that was constantly envied by my friends in other courses. I am lucky to have made lifelong friends and have visited and been visited by them multiple times in the past couple of years.
CEID supported me academically and socially and also provided good career development options, from our amazing class trip to London, to hosting panels, presenting at international conferences and, most importantly for me, the opportunity to complete a placement-based dissertation. I worked with the amazing team at Scotdec to complete my Master’s thesis. Seeing the inner workings of a small charity was valuable to me, as it reflects the experience of my current role. I found the range of assignment options including debates, presentations, and posters, alongside traditional essays, were good preparation for the practical presentations I would create in my future career.
It was also great to have the opportunity to work on group projects with people who were as interested and passionate about the topics we covered as I was. I discovered that I loved to lead these projects, and am therefore excited to be starting a new job next month, as Project Lead of the Creative Places Project with Southside Partnership DLR. This is my dream role, focused on bringing the arts to communities who have little access to them.
I was extremely lucky when it came to finding a job after my Masters (I submitted my Master’s thesis, one hour later I had my second job interview for my current role and 10 minutes after that I got the phone call saying I had got the job!). It can be difficult to balance working on a thesis while searching for jobs, but I am glad I took the time to do some job research during my thesis summer, as it meant I had a job straight after I finished the course. I found my post on a job mailing list and would recommend signing up to one.
The main challenge of working in the non-profit sector are the low pay options. Unfortunately, the most meaningful work is usually the lowest paid. My advice to students looking to start a career in the non-profit sector is to have a strong CV both academically and with extracurriculars.
My biggest piece of advice is to enjoy your time as a CEID student. My Master’s in Edinburgh was one of the most magical periods of my life and if I could redo it tomorrow I would.
