Arts Intranet

This summer, we had the opportunity to intern at Americans for the Arts. Callia, a student at Harvard University, worked with the Government Affairs team, and Bella, a recent graduate of Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, worked with the Marketing and Communications team. Both of us hope to pursue artistic careers in the future: Callia as a filmmaker and Bella as a visual artist specializing in soft sculpture. Having gotten a taste of the arts administration and advocacy world this summer, we wanted to share our experiences and discuss the ways we have found that the arts and advocacy are intertwined.

“What is justice?” In my first year of college, I had a research assignment to choose a case study related to this question. I wrote about the need to increase equitable access to arts education in the United States as a means for social justice, and used resources from Americans for the Arts for my research. With previous experience as a visual arts student as well as an art teacher for students from underserved schools in the Washington, D.C. area, I knew the transformative power that the arts could have to empower individuals and communities. My classmates were eager during my presentation to hear more about the case for the arts as a matter of social justice, as many of them reflected that they had never thought about arts in the context of social impact or equity. Since then, I have wanted to be an advocate for the arts wherever I go, knowing that it is so intertwined with issues of equity and social justice. I have pursued ways to integrate my interests in the arts with my professional goals of advocacy and related communications fields. This summer, I had the perfect opportunity to integrate my interest in the arts with my professional goals as the Marketing and Communications intern at Americans for the Arts.

Lindsay Sheridan

If I had to compress my identity into just a few words, I guess I’d go with “emerging arts leader.” That’s the popular phrase for what I am, right? A 20-something, fresh-out-of-college, five-years-or-less-of-experience young arts professional. What am I emerging to? Unclear (and impossible to predict).

What I do know for certain is this: I am called to work in this field because I believe passionately in the arts’ ability to contribute uniquely to a community’s sense of identity – to provide local, intimate, authentic experiences. I am called to this work because the arts have always been central to my own life, and it never really occurred to me to dedicate my career to anything else.

Certain artistic moments have evoked inexplicable emotions: sitting among an audience entranced by a cello and dancer duet in a warm, intimate venue. Taking in a favorite song by a folk-rocker on a perfect summer night in the grass at Wolf Trap’s amphitheater. Looking up to see my conductor’s smirk of pride in the middle of our Rachmaninoff-composed lyrical viola soli. These snapshots are more than just pleasant memories – they are some of the most important markers on my life’s timeline. This work is my vocation: I’ll do whatever it takes to allow individuals and communities to encounter these intangible, powerful experiences.

All this emotion aside, I am currently an unemployed emerging arts leader. When my internship in DC ended in mid-August, I felt like I was in great shape. The summer had brought about several interviews, and I arrived back in the Midwest with a job offer (hooray!). After much internal debate, I made the somewhat foolish decision to turn down two offers. A job that I really wanted needed a couple weeks to complete their decision-making process and I thought I might get it. I didn’t. After a few more road trips across the Midwest and second place results, I had to reevaluate. If I didn’t want to wait around for the right job in a familiar geographic location, it was time to throw caution to the wind and apply for positions in such foreign lands as Ohio, Massachusetts, and Missouri.

Gerard Atkinson

An unexpected part of the internship job description—being called upon to be a documentary judge. In addition to my work in the Research Services team at Americans for the Arts, I was asked to be a judge at this year’s National History Day, in the senior group documentary section. It turns out the arts and history have a lot to do with each other.

Delali Ayivor

I know this about myself: I am a writer and I am an obruni.

Obruni is a term that comes from the Ghanaian language of Twi and it translates to foreigner or, more archaically “white man.” I was born in Houston, TX. My mother was born in Durham, NC and my father in Lome, Togo. I was raised, primarily, in Accra, Ghana. In my life I have lived in four countries and three states and through it all, I have had trouble identifying myself as an American.

The United States has been a constant symbol of idolatry for me. As an elementary school student, I ordered my father to bring back suitcases full of Oreos and Cheetos from his business trips, simply for the sheer commercial joy of the American name-brand. So when I moved, by myself, from Accra, Ghana to the outskirts of Northwest Michigan at age 15 to attend boarding school, I was, for the first time since the age of 3, ecstatically emerged in America, in my obsession.

Now I am going to say something that doesn’t get said enough; I love the Midwest. Perhaps because it was the first place that I lived in the United States where I was old enough to form an opinion, but I suspect there are others out there like me.

Coming from West Africa with absolutely no background in American history, the Midwest was the America I had always envisioned. This was the America I had gleaned from hours of Lifetime Television for Women made-for-tv movies; a place where my first poetry teacher, a farm girl, actually had her first kiss on a hayride, where soda was referred to as ‘pop’, the forgotten frontier of endless strip malls and moms in department store khakis pulling up to Rotary Club meetings in their Toyota minivans to talk about foreign lands they might never see, the backwards mud people saved by $5 a month set-aside through clever coupon usage down at the Piggly Wiggly.