Arts council grants internship funding

Author: Alexxa Gotthardt

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.

Students interested in the grants may send applications outlining their internship of choice to COTA, which will then consider the applications and select applicants on the basis of financial need and internship relevance.

"In addition to financial need, selection is dependent on the quality of the internship," said Andres. "The internships are very open, they can be anywhere in the world and are only limited by the students' imaginations and their success at finding internships."

The internship experience is an important one for many students in both building a resume and in forming an idea of an after-college career path. This can be especially true at a rural, small, liberal arts college such as Middlebury.

"We also know that Middlebury, Vt., is a bit off the beaten path - we know that the art world operates in other centers and we want our students to be able to experience that in a first-hand sort of way," said Andres.

Although the $500 and $1,000 dollar grants may not fund an entire internship experience, the Arts Council, COTA, Career Services Office and College Advancement hope that it will give students a head start, making internships possible where they were not before. "The idea is to reach as many students as possible," said Kavanagh. "We hope the grants will remove at least one obstacle for students interested in arts internships." The deadline for Winter Term internship grants is Oct. 26. Contact Susan Walker in the Career Services Office for application details.