Emma Salkild (1999)
Paul Galea:
Hello Emma. Paul Galea from International Grammar here. How are you going?
Emma:
I’m well, thanks, Paul. How are you?
I’m well. Now we have had the pleasure of each other’s company not so long ago at the little reunion that we had. And it was very nice catching up with you. You were so engaging and charming on that evening and I thought, ‘Wow, I need to let the rest of the world see exactly how engaging and charming you are’. So here we are.
Emma:
Thank you. Yeah, It was a great night. It was so good to see the old premises and see all the new additions and touch base with some people I knew from school and meet people that had graduated before I did. Yeah. It was fantastic. Yeah. Nice.
Paul Galea:
OK, so Emma, you you left in 1999 and obviously, that’s quite a while ago, and we’re not going to talk anyone’s age here, but that is quite a while ago. How about you let us know what you’re doing now, and how you got there and, you know, the journey you’ve taken and what life has held for you since you left IGS?
Emma:
Sure. So I’m a senior content designer at Service New South Wales; so working for the government and I started that role mid last year. I’ve got two kids. It’s OK if you don’t know what ‘content design’ is because it’s a kind of new discipline, and not everybody knows what it is, but it kind of looks at digital content at all stages of the user journey, and uses research and design principles to kind of craft and build out copy and content to make sure that people can understand it and action things that they need.
Paul Galea:
OK, so what degree did you do? Did you do a uni degree to set yourself up for that or you just sort of learned that as you’ve been going along?
Emma:
A bit of both. So at university, I actually started off studying Education, English and Theatre because I think at the time I had this idea that I was going to become a drama teacher and I’d come back to IGS and I’d work with Ms Morabito! But I think in the end, I developed this love for writing and publishing, and I really wanted to pursue that so I ended up doing a Masters Degree, actually, in Creative Writing. At the time, I don’t think there were any specialist courses at universities like there are now to do what I do. So I think now you’d have really good Communications Degrees that would kind of cover what I do, to the extent of what I do; my digital content. And you also have a lot of U X design degree courses and specialist courses you can do. But what I did; I kind of just started working around in publishing. So I worked at a publishing company in London for a little while, and we’d have, because it was fiction and nonfiction, lots of big name authors and celebrities, like Julie Andrews coming through with her latest memoir. And that was fun for a bit. Then I actually worked on a street press art paper as an arts editor where I could go to all the theatre I wanted, which was great. And, funnily enough, I had at one point a Year 11 student from IGS randomly contact me to ask if they could do some writing for our paper as well. And they wouldn’t have known that I was an old IGS student. That was the youngest writer to ever contact me and write for the paper. And I just loved that. That was an IGS student.
Paul Galea:
You remember the name?
Emma:
Yes, I do. It was Cian Galea! Yeah, and I just I looked it up. I still I could still find what he wrote online. So he reviewed a theatre production for us, so he wouldn’t have known that, who I was to just reach out. And I found it from 2012. So that was nice.
Paul Galea:
That sounds very interesting, because the work you’ve probably gone into when you left school. A lot of the job that you’re in now didn’t even exist, did it? Really?
Emma:
Yeah. So I kind of stumbled into, like, digital content blogging just because I like the sound of it and doing it for myself. I once wrote a blog with someone that got archived in the National Library. So I think because I just had a passion for it, I kind of built up. So then, digital content obviously wasn’t around to the extent it is now in post 1999. So, yeah, I just kind of wrote a lot. I put my hands up for things, and then I started kind of getting work that way, and I made a conscious decision that I didn’t want to write for print anymore; I only wanted to do digital. I think because I made that decision 11 years ago, I kind of got ahead of the game a little bit where I could really develop those skills and become niche in what I do.
Paul Galea:
OK, what made you make that conscious decision? Was there any particular thing that made you say? ‘Ok, I’m going to go this route rather than do a bit of this and a bit of that?
Emma:
What I liked about digital content at the time was I could spend more time on storytelling or, you know, getting my point across and less time on things like when you write for a magazine or newspaper, you get have to get quite obsessed with things like how the alignment of the actual wording doesn’t match up. It wasn’t quite the same when I was doing digital and then I love the idea that you could put something up and then if you needed to, you could change it half an hour later or expand on it. I love that. It could reach more people and, yeah, it just felt more exciting to me. Whereas some of my colleagues were more into print and, maybe you know what happened, but I suddenly started seeing their magazines folding or, you know, things going under. And I just felt really confident and excited by digital content.
Paul Galea:
Yeah, well, when you think about it, you probably jumped ship from print writing or print journalism at exactly the right time, because that’s when it all started to change dramatically, didn’t it? I mean, well, maybe not when you did it, but not too long after.
Emma:
Yeah, exactly. So I think I was lucky that there was a whole lot of people that maybe kind of felt scared by it or didn’t really like it or looked down on it or didn’t see it as sophisticated or as valuable as print. I found it exciting that you can reach the masses, and you can change things. That’s the power of it. I kind of jumped on it, and I think I definitely was lucky and since then I’ve written for, done digital content for Red Kite Children’s Cancer charity, for HCF health insurance, for UTS, for Vodafone. And now I’m at Service New South Wales, reaching a huge audience with my content, which is really exciting. Yeah, that’s great.
Paul Galea:
So that’s an interesting journey. I always just think that when people make those sort of big decisions, I’m just always interested in the motivation and what makes it happen? So it sounds to me like it just was really exciting for you and the fact that you’ve decided to make that move and it paid dividends is really good. When you were a young student at IGS, you did the whole thing, too. You did the whole cycle. You were a young kid at IGS. You went through After Care and Primary School. You went through High School and then you came back and worked at IGS as an After Care worker for many years. You were one of the first ones. Probably you and Kate, I would say, were a couple of the first ones who did that because that was…..when were you working? When did you come back at work at IGS? Probably in 2000?
Emma:
I took a year off to travel. So it was 2001. By that stage, there were a few different people there like Vanessa and Bertie. I actually came into IGS in Year 6, but we were at the Riley Street campus, and I was so nervous, and everyone was just instantly so lovely to me. And I made friends really quickly, which was so nice. We were first of all, because we were in Year 6, in that kind of standard entry level on the ground floor and then for Year 7 in the Riley Street campus, you went down to the basement. And then we went across to the first Ultimo campus, which is different to the one that they’re in now and then we went across to the campus where the school still is now. So I was in three campuses.
Paul Galea:
That’s right. Yeah. And, if you were in that dungeon down in Riley Street in Surry Hills, you saw IGS in probably its worst phase in terms of a physical place because teaching and learning down in that dungeon was an interesting experience! Let’s put it that way!
Emma:
I feel like it probably felt worse, maybe, for the teachers. As for me, though, I think sometimes when you’re a kid and you’re with your friends and you’re having a good time, like the impacts are not as big. We appreciated when we got to the final campus and we felt very lucky. But I don’t think it probably had a huge impact. It’s not like we would be like, ‘Oh, this is awful because we didn’t have any windows down here.’ So I don’t remember us consciously saying that as a 12 or 13 year old…
Paul Galea:
No, you wouldn’t have but I tell you, that’s something that I noticed-that there was no natural light there. I just kept waiting for the vampires to come out because it was so dark and dingy. But anyway, we survived, and we moved on. Now, I know that your big sister went to IGS and I know that your two little brothers went at least through primary to IGS, and that you actually wrote a beautiful letter accompanying your daughter’s application to try and get into, IGS. And that’s that’s actually ongoing as we speak. But, that letter was just absolutely gorgeous, and I’m actually going to probably put it somewhere in this interview so that people can read it. But your big sister – you always talk very, very highly in terms of what IGS did for your sister. You want to tell us about that?
Emma:
Yeah. So, yeah, Sarah, she’d been at another, I won’t mention the name, but she was at another, all girls private school, and it wasn’t gelling with her. She’s super sharp and quick witted and she identifies as an atheist, so it wasn’t going down well for her, and she was thinking about dropping out. This was in Year 11 and my mum actually found IGS and said ‘Look, I’ve found this school. It’s co-ed. It’s non-denominational. You can come in, give it a go. Just one last chance before you drop out.’ So she said, ‘OK, I’ll go,’ and she worked under Mr Miller, and I think she ended up doing three unit English, three unit History and I think three unit three Art and Maths. And she ended up getting 97% in her HSC. So I think when my parents saw that and how it had really helped her and it suited her so much and the amazing results she got, remembering this is someone who was considering dropping out of school, they wanted to send all of us there.
Paul Galea:
It’s a nice story. And your sister, how she now? Is she all right?
Emma:
Yeah, she’s great. She now works in executive leadership roles, and she’s very passionate about sustainability. She works in ‘people and culture’ and, is really, really big on looking out for the people and what she can do for us and what she can do for the world. And, yeah, she’s a total success.
Paul Galea:
So OK, now, obviously, we just talked a little bit about your time there, but what about other things? I mean, I know you made some great friends who you’re still friends with today. But what were some of the great things that you remember about being at school or some of the things that impacted on you.
Emma:
I think number one, hands down, was the exposure to theatre that I got through Rita (Morabito). I think that really helped cement my love for storytelling, and it really helped with my self esteem. So I think I’ve always maybe been a little bit more bookish and shy, I can be shy and introverted, but I’ve always loved the idea of Drama and Theatre. And it was when we were down in that, second Ultimo campus that she put up flyers to audition for The Cagebirds, and she was doing it with a bunch of Year 12 girls who at the time I thought were just so cool and so edgy. I was in Year 8 and feeling really awkward in myself and who I was. And I turned up to that audition and just-I talked about it in my letter-that her presence or whatever vibe she was giving out; you know, she’s a small woman, but she’s got this huge presence and it was also like she was saying to me, ‘I see you and I believe in you and you can do this.’ And I auditioned and I got the part and that play, Cagebirds; being a part of that and feeling like I was part of a big group delivering incredible art was just amazing. Then I do have memories of her kind of dragging off these teenagers through the streets of Surry Hills to things like plays at downstairs Belvoir Street, where, you know, we had Hugo Weaving and Jeffrey Rush and all the great Australian actors at the time who weren’t probably as famous as they are now just in front of us, performing and exposing us to all that. I felt incredibly lucky and privileged, and it’s never, ever been wasted on me the kind of theatre that she exposed me to.
Paul Galea:
Well, that’s it’s very interesting to hear that because Rita has been at that school for such a long time, basically the whole time. And there must be, I would be saying, hundreds of people who feel that way about her in terms of how she introduced them to the the dramatic arts and fostered any love that anyone had, because she is an absolute dynamo when it comes to that subject. That’s really lovely. I mean, she’ll listen to this, and she’ll be very touched by that. And so that’s good. We’ve known each other for… it’s too long to know now, but she drives me insane, but I can stand back and look at her and realise that she is an incredible teacher!
Emma:
And she’s so good with her storytelling, like The Journey. By that stage, we were a bit older and Kate, Zoe, Vanessa and I, we played the bitchy school teachers in The Journey, which was a play that they did in the original Riley Street campus across, I think, three levels, and there was, like, people on stilts. And it was just such an extravaganza, it was incredible, I think. Yeah, she’s so talented and so creative.
Paul Galea:
That was an incredible show.
Emma:
Yeah, but something happened when you just recently took me on that tour and I stepped into your new Drama Department and we went into that room with all the lights, the stage and all the lights hanging up. And there’s like, the clothes locked up. It’s like in a vault for all her props. And I actually got a lump in my throat because I’m just so happy for all your students there to see and for her to see how far she’s come and what she has. And she deserves to have all of that because, you know, back in the day when we did Cagebirds, it was in very different circumstances, and we didn’t have all, you know, the fancy lights and all of those kind of things and we still put on a great show, but I’m so glad to see that your kids at IGS now, like the kids going to IGS, now they have all these amazing resources. It’s so exciting.
Paul Galea:
Yeah, well, look, I mean, to be fair, Rita fought so hard for all of that stuff for her subject, being, again, a complete pain in the arse. But you can never take away the credit of what she’s done in terms of Drama at that school. Just absolutely incredible. Alright, then. That’s very nice. Obviously, you’re a grown woman now, and you’ve made your way in the world. Any advice you would be giving to some of those young students that you are talking about? Or even not so young students? Anything that you’ve learned along the way?
Emma:
Oh, I would say that they should take up any opportunities that present themselves to them, even if they’re scared. So, try out for the sports team or, you know, audition for the play. Don’t be scared of failure or losing, because, if you feel like you want to do something, just keep putting yourself out there. That is a really important one. And, you know, just work out what you enjoy. I think something that’s really funny was when I was in Year 6 there, and my brother was in Year 4, and he was really good at sports, and we were in the softball team and everyone would pick Tom first. If you know, when you get the captains, you get two captains to pick the team one at at the time, and they would pick me last for softball because I wasn’t good at sport. But then, you know, I found what I was good at theatre and drama. And so, just put yourself out there and find out what you’re into and try and be brave.
Paul Galea:
Yeah, that’s very true. And that the one thing – I mean, this is it sounds a little bit corny, but it’s a very good phrase- ‘I never lose. I either win or I learn.’ And I think if you take that as a mantra, you can go a long way, which it sounds as though you’ve done, and you have been an absolute delight. I am very hopeful that you’re going to be a parent at our school very soon. And I’m going to take a very active interest in seeing how your daughter goes at our school because if she’s half as talented and half as articulate as her mum, then she’s going to be pretty good.
Emma:
Thanks so much. Yeah, I would say, also, one of the highlights was working under you in the After Care. That was fantastic. So, yeah, that could be another thing that the Year 12 students can do. It was pretty fun to spend your university school holidays, taking a group of kids to the zoo and that I got to run my Drama Club there for the kids and all of that stuff. It was such a good part time job for me while I was a student.
Paul Galea:
Well, it was not only good for you, but good. for us. One of the things that has been been a real success at our school is our Alums coming back and working in that area. And it really just adds to that whole community feel that the school sort of prides itself on. So yeah, I agree. And thank you for the nice plug for me, because otherwise I was gonna completely cancel this interview. OK, lovely to talk to you.
Emma:
You too. Bye.
Editor’s note: Emma’s daughter will be staring at IGS in 2024.😀
Emma’s farewell speech at the Year 12 Assembly in 1999.
