My summer 2021 internship experience: What is arts administration like?
When I first heard about arts administration, it was described as “the business side of the arts,” and I was wary. My impression of it was that it was for people who want to get into the arts but are too scared to commit to being a “real” artist. However, after shadowing an arts administration student at the University of Kentucky (the college I now attend) during my senior year of high school, I realized that there is so much more to this major than the idea of the “safe” path. Arts Administration isn’t an option for artists to fall back on, but an amalgamation of everything that makes the arts industry function. It is filled with creativity and passion for making art happen, and it opens up into countless possible career paths. Needless to say, I fell in love with my major pretty quickly.
This summer, I am an administrative and fundraising intern with Colors of Connection. Along with classes in digital design, emotional intelligence, management, marketing, and fundraising, part of my graduation requirements for the UK Arts Admin program is internship experience. Much of what I’ve been doing at Colors of Connection is assisting in preparations for the Girl Awakening Program as its launch approaches. I’ve done work in soliciting in-kind donations for supplies and equipment, which includes answering questions about Colors of Connection and Girl Awakening, as well as keeping in contact with representatives from companies and organizations. I have also helped with the Colors of Connection social media, researched various topics for the organization, and assisted with the donor management software.
I have come to appreciate the unbelievable amount of time, preparation, and people that go into the creation and execution of an arts event or program. The myriad of minute details that must be taken into account to make an entire organization and its specific programs run never fails to fascinate me. For example, there is so much thought and planning that goes into creating the organization’s social media marketing plan, from the brand image, to the posting schedule, and to developing a relationship with its patrons. Arts administration is the perfect intersection between the logical left side of the brain and the creative right side, which is exactly what I craved when dreaming about my future studies in high school. Management, business communications, and marketing are topics that I once yawned at, but as soon as you throw arts into the mix, my interests are piqued.
The internship brings the theoretical concepts I’ve learned in class into tangible reality. In classes this past semester, I created mock plans for my own imaginary programming, but that pales in comparison to working at a real, functioning organization.
