Q #1: What did you learn from your first week at your internship? Did anything surprise you? Who did you meet and what did they do? Did you engage in any kind of code switching?
On the first week on my internship I got to learn a lot in PR & Marketing. In PR & Marketing, I got to learn how to use Canva, a website that graphic designs perfect for advertising and create events through Facebook and through event calendar websites. I also got to know how people from Denver and out of town to go to events on websites such as 5280 Magazine, 303 Magazine, Eventbrite, etc. It was a cool way for people to be aware about events through calendars.
Throughout the first week, I was surprised the amount of work and effort that you have to put into to make sure everything is going smoothly. Also within that first week, I was surprised that PR & Marketing really sparked my interest as a person because I realized I like to advertise and tell people about events a lot, so it’s a definite field to look into during college.
In the internship I met amazing people. Victoria, which is the Marketing manager, that I help in Fridays, gets to promote Museo for her job and is still an artist in and outside of work. Antonia, which specializes as Education Assistant, that I help in Tuesdays, she also revises the workshops and creates lesson plans for the teachers and students. Maruquita, who is my former supervisor which I first met over the summer before I started my internship, but sadly the second week of my internship she had to leave to continue her teaching degree, but I give her best of luck! Through that also got to meet Janel, which is now my supervisor for my shifts to replace Maruquita and helps me to make sure I am on track during the internship. I also met Alexis who is the Education Coordinator, Juliana who is the Development Coordinator and Maruca who is the Executive Director of Museo. All of the co-workers inside Museo were super friendly and super welcoming and I thank them so much for the welcoming!
With interacting with them, I was able to code switch little bit with them because I felt like it was a very chill environment in Museo and it felt very easy to be able to communicate professionally with them yet very laid back at the same time. All of them are super nice and they are super welcoming into the space, which I enjoy a lot!
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Q #2: What was the best thing that happened this week at your internship? How did it make you feel? What else makes you excited about your internship?
The best thing that happened this week at my internship will have to be the involvement of marketing. This week Victoria, the marketing manager, and I were getting ready for Las (H)adas exhibition and we had to get creative on marketing strategies on Las (H)adas. We discussed on how we can use Instagram as a platform for as an outlet for creative ideas on how we can hype people up on the exhibition, make them excited and say ‘I want to go to this event!”.
During this process it felt like I was putting my best effort into the marketing and I was enjoying it at the same time. Throughout it I didn’t felt bored and feeling like I didn’t force myself to do something for work, instead I felt like I was doing something that will be beneficial for me and the people around me. I did research on the exhibition Las (H)adas and how it was connected to the movement happening in Mexico called Ni Una Mas where they are calling the attention of femicide in Mexico and using our platform to get people more aware about it. So what Museo is doing to get the people aware of the situation they decided to spray paint pink crosses, a symbol used for Ni Una Mas, outside Museo. To get people aware in social media I will be taking photos of the pink crosses and create a theme and awareness of Ni Una Mas to get people aware of the movement and the exhibition itself. It was a cool way to grab people’s attention.
Other exciting things I got to do during the internship is in Education where I get to learn more about cultural art around the world and here in Denver. Throughout the stuff I get to learn update it towards corresponding lesson plans to make it more fun and interactive for the teacher and the student. One of the most exciting ones I got to learn about was the iconic, Frida Kahlo, so I included videos and a virtual tour so it was more possible for students to enjoy.
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Q #3: How do your actions affect your workplace? Do you contribute positively? How do your co-workers actions affect your internship? Which co-workers are you connecting with?
With my actions, it affects my workplace by helping them getting things done quicker. With the fall season coming up, Museo has a lot of events coming up in the upcoming months, with me there I get to be the helping hand of whatever the coworkers need to get done faster and on time.
When I contribute to the tasks that I am given with I try to do my best to please myself and my other coworkers. Whenever I am there, I always like to help out with anything they need help with. On a Friday shift, I was a little bit sick, but I was able to help during my shift and stay for the ConnectArte event by helping setting up the event and controlling the music and Instagram story for the night, I felt very proud of it. I was also assigned to help create sugar skulls for the upcoming Dia De Los Muertos events which was super cool to make. And just last week I was assigned to social media marketing, so I was able to control all of social media pages of Museo, which it is a separate job and that is pretty cool that it is a real job.
With my coworkers, they affect my internship by acting the older sibling to me. They help me so much with the stuff I get to learn about within the internship and they have also helped me whenever I feel overwhelmed about something. They help out so much on what they do and they want to make sure that the internship lasts while I’m there. One of the coworkers even told me I had a really good work ethic which was really surprising to me considering I’m a teenager.
Also with my coworkers, all of them I feel very connected with whenever I’m there. There is a new coworker coming into the museum as the Director of Operations and she was a super nice person and she helped with the ConnectArte event with my Marketing Director and I. Whenever I’m there, I never feel like a sore thumb out of the group which is a really nice feeling.
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Q #4: What are you responsible for at your workplace? What do you think is your main contribution to your work site? What do your day to day duties look like?
Depending on the day of the week, my responsibility changes when I have my shift on Tuesdays and Fridays. On Tuesdays, I am responsible for creating the sugar skulls for Día De Los Muertos and folding brochures for Education and exhibition. On Friday, I am in charge of keeping social media updated with events and sneak peeks of the Las (H)adas Exhibition.
My main contribution at the work site is being in charge of social media. With social media, I tell people on Museo’s social media whenever an event is coming up and I show a small part of the Exhibition coming soon. Reently, Museo has been trying to move forward of where they are at and try to get more people aware about Museo. I even have to be on social media on days outside of my shift days to keep the social media updated with a schedule that I follow that me and the marketing director made. For example, I created a Facebook post and flyer for the collaboration we are doing with the Latino Chamber for the #CO4PRMX Benefit Concert and I did an Instagram story showing a sneak peek of the Las (H)adas Exhibition.
The duties that I have to do day to day is the same responsibilities I have to do every time I go there. But if one of my mentors is missing then I go to my other mentor to do same duties. Then the next time go to the next shift we go back to regular schedule.
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Q #5: How do you feel like your internship is going so far? What are the highlights and the “lowlights”? Do you feel like you are making connections with your co-workers? What can you do to improve your experience?
My internship so far is going really well. I think the internship is going really smoothly and nothing big so going on right now, since the museum is closed at the moment for installation. But I feel the internship will get more intensive when the opening is about to come around.
The highlights during the internship is the involvement in the social media, especially when our events are around the corner because I get to learn about the artist in the exhibition. One artist that I have met was Arlette Lucero, she has a mural in the exhibition I get to learn about the painting and her as the artist. The lowlights during the internship is how long I am at the internship. Even though the shifts are three hours, me coming in from school, I tend to be really tired from the lack of sleep or the work load at school. But I try my best to not show it to my co-workers so that I can keep the professionalism well and work my best.
With my co-workers, I feel like I am connecting well with because all of them are really friendly and are easy to talk to. I don’t feel nervous around them and we share the same curiosity about each other so we ask questions about each other, and are really considerate about my experience while I am there for the semester. When I am there I don;t feel like a fish out of the pond.
What I can do to improve my experience more is to help out with events more. Museo has a lot of events happening in the next few months and if I volunteer more the experience will be more memorable and enjoyable. Especially the opening exhibition event, I get to get people to donate for a good cause and I get to see the final product of the exhibition, which I saw progressing in the weeks I was there.
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Q #6: How do people at work treat you? How does it make you feel? If you have in intern one day will you treat them the same? What have you learned so far from your co-workers and sponsor?
People at work treat me like any co-worker, which is really nice. They are really nice and easy to talk to which makes me not as anxious when I am at work because at some of my other internships I feel really intimidated with other co-workers.
If I had one intern for a day, I would treat them the same as my co-workers treat me. I say that because my co-workers really welcome me into their space and they don’t treat me like a kid that has to look over for three hours. For my intern, I would exactly do the same, help them whatever they need help with, give them roles to help them have a good experience, and give them any advice that would help them with the career they are going to in the future.
With my co-workers and my sponsor, what I have learned while I was over there that everything takes time and everything is a learning experience. I remember I had a conversation with one of my co-workers while I was working talking about starting at a new job, she explained to me that you will not know what to do within the first few month and you have to be trained and/or learn yourself to know what to do everyday when you come to work. Another co-worker that I talked to about life outside of my internship is college, she helped me with giving me advice and what she did for college. After our conversations, it really helped me with the future I am looking at for the next 10 years.
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Q #7: What is the difference between working on personal art projects and working in a creative business? What have you learned about working in a creative business?
The difference between working on a personal art project and working in the creative business is that working in the creative business is that you are creating art for a purpose and a personal art project has no goal towards something.
When working in the creative business, you are creating something with a goal towards that project. For example, if you were to create an advertisement for your business or create clothing, that goal is to get people’s attention to get profits for your business. Another example is creating an exhibition for an artist, that goal is to show publicity for the artist.
If you are creating on a personal project, you are not having a personal goal towards something. Rather, you are making a project based on creativity and doing it for fun not creating a profit for it. But if you are trying to get a profit for your art, that is working in the creative business because you are selling your art for a profit. But if you are doing art because of a idea popped in your head or doing it for your free time, that is just working on a personal art project.
From what I have learned from working in the creative business, working in the arts is completely different than working as an artist. If you are working as an artist, you are your own business and you make the rules on what is happening, the importance is you as an artist to be successful. If you are working in the arts, you have guidelines to follow, or you have a boss to follow what you need to do. If you are working in the creative business, you are supporting your business you are working in rather than yourself. For some people, they are both supporting a business and themselves by working in the arts while being an artist outside of their jobs.
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Q #7: How is your internship project going? Describe the progress of your project. How did the conversation about your project go with your sponsor? (If you haven’t discussed the project with your sponsor yet, how do you plan to do so?) Did they have good insights into how to improve or expand the project? How does your project bridge what you do at your internship and what you like to create for yourself? Has your relationship with your sponsor evolved as you have engaged in a creative dialogue about your project? Art there any challenges you are experiencing planning or doing your project?
My internship project is going really smoothly. Right now I am working on the proposal for my project. My project is gonna be creating an event for teen artists to show their work in the museum. To get the event created, I have to get a proposal ready for the other coworkers to see to follow through with the idea. In this proposal, I am putting my objective, the timeline, and social media post guideline to follow through in the next weeks if the event is approved. This project is a mock project, so it may or may not be a real event depending to my coworkers’ decision.
My conversation with my sponsor was pretty casual, it was brought up when we were talking about my program and what I have to do daily as a BBTA intern. Then I brought up about the project and what I wanted to do, my sponsor said that I can make a meeting with Maruca, the art curator of the museum, to show a proposal of the project.
Victoria, my PR & Marketing Director sponsor, gave me really good insights on what I need to do for my project. When working with her daily, I get to learn what you need to do to advertise for an event and how to get people to participate in the event. She was able to help me learn what happens for advertisements for the museums that I can put into the project.
With this project, it bridges to what I do for the internship and what I like to create for myself is I get to experience what it is like to work as an advertising person in the creative industry. For me, I have always wanted to work in the creative art field and over the past couple of years I learned that I like to tell people a lot about events going on in Denver and convince people to go to the events. With my communications with people. I feel that it connects well with advertising.
With this project, I felt the relationship between me and my sponsors have mostly stayed the same because we have a pretty good relationship within the work space. This project, they know pretty well about and they are supportive about my project and what I want to do.
So far in my project, the only challenges I need to face in this project is organization of the proposal and making sure that everything goes smoothly. With this proposal, I want to make sure that everything is perfect for the meeting with Maruca because I am a perfectionist and I want this project to go very smoothly.
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Q #9: What have you seen or experienced in your internship that has inspired you the most on your own artistic journey? Has this experience changed your artistic ambitions? How?
Through my internship, I was inspired as an artist to try different things. I have realized through this internship that you don’t need to be doing one thing in life. One of the coworkers that I get to see is an education assistant and an artist at the same time which is amazing for me. Through this, I am inspired to try different things and see what I am good at and what I am not good at.
Also as an artist, through my internship I am inspired to still work in the museum field because I always like to support other artists and let them shine. I want to work in a place that supports artists that need to be recognized for their work. Since working there, I was always interested in what the artists are showing in Museo and seeing this environment and it made me think about how I want to give artists a platform.
For example, when I am helping in Marketing, I get excited to create new social media posts for events at Museo because I am supporting artists by creating awareness of their artwork to the social media audience and attracting them to come to Museo. One of the posts I was most proud of was creating the Las (H)adas exhibition because me and Victoria created an ad that resembled the exhibition with the butterflies all over the image and it created a fresh look for Museo. I was super excited for the audience to see the exhibition.
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Q #10: Has this experience been a rewarding one for you? Why or Why not (keep it positive, if you had negative experiences, focus on what you learned- make yourself look good!)? How has the reality of your internship matched or contrasted with your expectations? What is the most important learning you did during your internship?
This experience has been rewarding for me because I was able to be involved in something that I loved. Even though it was different from what I have expected working behind the scenes of working in Museo De Las Americas, it was an interesting one.
With working at Museo, I was able to see what it is like working at a non-profit organization. Every time that I work there, the attention that I go towards when working with them is getting ready for events. These events get the audience awareness of what Museo is. The art exhibitions are one of them, it also includes; First Fridays, Artist talks, and other celebrations that Museo organizes to get people in. With helping them, I got to learn the amount of effort that is put into getting Museo out there and how much planning is put in it.
With the reality of my internship it somehow matched and contrasted to my internship because I knew with working in a museum, it wasn’t always gonna be just art while I was there. But when I went into it, there was so much work and effort involved into it that I didn’t even realize and the things I see is just the layer of what is happening behind the scenes of Museo.
Throughout the time I was at Museo, the most important learning that I got while I was there is, the true lens of working in the creative business. In the creative industry, it is a lot of work to get yourself out there. Whether you are an artist or a museum specialist, you have to make connections and talk to people all over Denver that share the same interest as you. With this piece of learning, I hope to use in the near future when I am working in the creative industry.
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