Meet the team: Mary

👋 Find Mary on Linkedin

What's your connection to Nottingham, and what do you love most about it?

I moved to Nottingham in my late twenties for a fresh start and to go to university, and honestly, it's one of the best things I've ever done. Not long after moving here I met my partner, and pretty quickly this city just felt like home. There's something about Nottingham that lets you be yourself - I  found I could express my artistic creativity here in a way I never really could before.

And the food. Coming from a small town where fish and chips was basically the pinnacle of dining, Nottingham completely blew my mind. It genuinely felt like the floodgates had opened. Every corner had something new to discover from Zaap, Miss Korea, Bonzai, Pizzamisu to Four Chefs, Missing Pieces - the list just keeps going.

What's your role at It's in Nottingham, and how did you get into it?

My journey here has been a bit of a winding road, but looking back it all makes sense. After finishing university, I went straight into helping school leavers get into apprenticeships with the likes of Aston Martin, Ferrari, Hyundai and Stoneacre through Nottingham college. That led me to the University of Nottingham, where I was helping PhD students and others find work experience in various job roles.

It was around that time that I started getting really into social media marketing, partly for myself, and partly just watching how the employment team at the university was communicating with students and thinking about how it could be done differently. I moved on to work with a games company supporting creatives in digital and design roles, and alongside that I started building my own blog and exploring Nottingham more deeply.

That exploration is really what brought me to It's in Nottingham. I ended up at a networking event at Nottingham Library where I was asked to deliver a content creation workshop for the BICP to small business owners and new start-ups, and that one moment genuinely changed everything. It led me straight to where I am now - Digital Marketing Executive at It's in Nottingham, which honestly feels like the role I was building towards without even knowing it.

What's your favourite hidden gem in the city that visitors often overlook?

It has to be the Canal and Kawffee. The canal is one of those places most people walk straight past, but there's something about watching the longboats drift by that just makes me slow down, it's just a great place I enjoy visiting to unwind. As I mentioned before, food is a big part of me and so is coffee! Theres a cute cafe called Kawffee, that's just become my go-to place to relax and catch up with friends or do some content editing for Its in Nottingham.