Internship Summary:
FIGMENT North Adams is a greater scale forum for the creation and display of participatory and interactive art by emerging artists across disciplines. It’s vision for art looks past the white-walled galleries and into the realm of participation. FIGMENT North Adams’ goal is to catalyze and explore personal transformation through creativity. With the Communications internship. Maggie was able to explore the ideas of leadership through social media and artist outreach as well as make creative decision of the event itself. Maggie worked endlessly with Krystal Henriquez, the producer of FIGMENT North Adams, to make this event as success as possible.
Reflection:
This internship was one of the best experiences that I could have that relates to my Spring 2017 semester here at MCLA. My internship, although it was technically communications, dabbled in a lot of different aspects of the core team decisions, meetings, and important tasks. My main priority as the Communications intern was to make sure that I would post at least four or five times a week via Facebook and the Instagram page for FIGMENT North Adams. I was able to make posts on the start of our crowdfunder as well as updates during the month that it was open, multiple posts of all the interns for FIGMENT North Adams, and other updates that deemed appropriate for the week. Although I found that useful, it started to get frustrating because I wouldn’t know what to say for certain texts on Facebook, because the language is different for various media platforms. But Krystal would always help me out when I needed it for different posts. But not only did I work online, I had the chance to interview two artists, Mel Fortini and Courtney Jorud, for our Artist Highlight articles that we like to publish so people can get an idea of who is coming to FIGMENT! That was a great opportunity to learn face to face communication skills as well as leadership skills in order to get the article published on multiple media platforms! Throughout the semester I was also able to shadow alongside Krystal who showed the basics of creating my own FIGMENT event, which is something that I would love to do in the future since I wrote a grant for my Grants & Fundraising class with Lisa Donovan for FIGMENT Danvers, my hometown. So being able to drabble in all aspects of being on the core team, although technically I was an intern, is not only helpful for my experience during the semester but it also provides a great opportunity for me to know how to produce my own FIGMENT in the near future.
On the last few days of the actual event, I found myself being a part of the core team even more. It seemed as though there were not many of us compared to last year, which was very interesting to me. I was able to help install chairs, tables, and other equipment the day before FIGMENT N. Adams as well as help delegate volunteers to make sure they are helping in the best way possible. Social media was also another huge aspect of the day before, day of, and day after for the event because we want to keep everyone who cannot make it to event to know what’s going on. Even though I found myself not posting 30 times in one day with both Facebook and Instagram, I was able to incorporate videos of various performances during the day to show how that our event was successful. I am not only proud of myself for being able to contribute to the team, but for everyone else who was either an intern or a part of the actual core team because without our team, there would be no FIGMENT North Adams. I’m hoping with the support of Krystal, my family, and peers and faculty of MCLA I will be able to implement my own arts event back home—and it was all because of this internship.
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