2008 Woodie Awards
Arts council grants internship funding
Alexxa Gotthardt
Issue date: 10/18/07 Section: Arts
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This year, the College's Arts Council, a group of Middlebury alumni and parents who have positions and resources in the arts, is kicking of a three-year pilot program to fund student internships in the arts. The council will distribute the funding in $500 parcels for Winter Term internships and up to $1,000 parcels for summer internships. Though these bundles might not fund an entire January in Los Angeles, or a full summer in New York, the Arts Council and the College's Committee on the Arts (COTA), hopes that the grants will "remove at least one obstacle for students interested in arts internships," said Senior Development Officer of College Advancement Susan Kavanagh.
Twice a year, the Arts Council meets with COTA - a group of representatives from the Departments of History of Art and Architecture, Studio Art, Film and Media Culture, Dance and Theater, the Middlebury College Museum of Art (MCMA), the Mahaney Center for the Arts and the Performing Arts Series. This year, however, the selected project does not focus on one specific department or organization. Instead, the project spans all the academic departments represented by COTA with the goal, as explained by Director of the Arts Glenn Andres, "of making internships in the arts more available to students."
A clear discrepancy between the funding available for internships in the arts and those, for example, in the financial or medical worlds in today's internship-heavy world is evident. Yet, thanks to the largely non-profit, non-corporation nature of professions in the arts, many museums, studios, theaters and dance companies cannot afford to pay their interns. College arts students are thus often bound to internships at home or must abandon the idea of an internship all together in favor of a paying job that might have little or nothing to do with their future aspirations.
COTA's proposition of a project funding arts internships was met with enthusiasm by the 28 members of the Arts Council, who approved the three-year pilot program and have already met and surpassed their initial goal of a $21,000 grant. According to Kavanagh, the council has now amassed over $30,000 dollars.
Twice a year, the Arts Council meets with COTA - a group of representatives from the Departments of History of Art and Architecture, Studio Art, Film and Media Culture, Dance and Theater, the Middlebury College Museum of Art (MCMA), the Mahaney Center for the Arts and the Performing Arts Series. This year, however, the selected project does not focus on one specific department or organization. Instead, the project spans all the academic departments represented by COTA with the goal, as explained by Director of the Arts Glenn Andres, "of making internships in the arts more available to students."
A clear discrepancy between the funding available for internships in the arts and those, for example, in the financial or medical worlds in today's internship-heavy world is evident. Yet, thanks to the largely non-profit, non-corporation nature of professions in the arts, many museums, studios, theaters and dance companies cannot afford to pay their interns. College arts students are thus often bound to internships at home or must abandon the idea of an internship all together in favor of a paying job that might have little or nothing to do with their future aspirations.
COTA's proposition of a project funding arts internships was met with enthusiasm by the 28 members of the Arts Council, who approved the three-year pilot program and have already met and surpassed their initial goal of a $21,000 grant. According to Kavanagh, the council has now amassed over $30,000 dollars.
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