Throughout my internship at BAF I worked towards art education programming. My role at BAF entailed researching and planning programming and gallery sitting. The programs I planned ultimately were not executed due to a lack of support from schools we would have liked to attend programs at BAF.

Provided below is a breakdown of the internship:

Tuesday, Oct 4th: Research into workshop/community focused event concepts including target audience

I researched the programs that are run around the city at various galleries and created a document that had a list of these organizations and a small summary of what educational programs they facilitated looked like. It referenced the source websites so that we could go back to them and get more information if needed.

Tuesday, Oct 11th: Completion of research and creation of 3 workshop/community-focused event concepts, choice of target audience and start of initial conversation to target audience for scheduling

I came up with three different workshop ideas and came forward with them to Chantal. She chose the workshop she wanted me to move forward with and I continued planning and organizing from there.

Tuesday, Oct 18th: Finalization of concepts and outreach to selected target audience with event date/time/details

Tuesday, Oct 25th: Kelly Lycan was installing her show at BAF and I had the opportunity to sit down and talk to her about her work. We were able to go over the program outline I had created and altered it according to what she envisioned the program to look like.

Tuesday, Nov 1st: At this point in the internship Chantal (the program manager) and I realized that the students we had planned in attendance for the workshop were not going to be available for the workshop we had planned.

This was the week we had planned on having the program, this resulted in me researching and looking up alternative student groups to come to the programs. I emailed out program proposals to multiple schools around the Vancouver area attempting to reach out and find students to come out to our programs.

Chantal and I went to buy some supplies for the opening of the Kelly Lycan exhibition that was opening that weekend. We chatted about BAF and how she got started at BAF, she is currently interested in project management and has tied together her multiple interests in this role. I found it a valuable experience to chat with Chantal and see where someone else took their BFA and what they did with it. It was additionally exciting because Chantal had interdisciplinary interests in visual arts, marketing and project management and she is working in a role that combines those interests. This is particularly intriguing because I am interested in how skills transfer across disciplines due to my background in both psychology and visual arts.

Tuesday, Nov 8th: I continued to work towards setting up the program with Keith Langergraber. We talked about what his vision for his program would be. He is currently the resident artist at BAF and he met with me over the past couple of weeks in passing and we had chatted about the workshop.

I created program outlines to send out to schools and organizations with student groups and continued to reach out and attempt to find students to attend.

Tuesday, Nov 15th: I was supposed to come into BAF however, there was no work to be done on the programs. I worked remotely in following up with contacts at schools.

Skills: This is a list of skills I had prior to the experience. I do not have a list of new skills that I learned because I believe I sharpened my skillset and used the tools I had in a new context.

• Researching and applying findings towards the development of a project.
• Communicating with others to create a program that aligned with the goals of the organization
  • This included working with Chantal as well as consulting with the artists whose work I was programming around
• Created concrete goals for myself to work towards
  • Finishing the research
  • Thinking of various program ideas
  • Consulting with the artists
  • Creating summaries and outlines of the proposed projects

What did I do?

I am attaching the materials I created throughout the internship below.

Program Research (working document) as well as ideas for programs:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZbVLB3RdPQH4c2riOMnqmBZtzFC4waX_UeqYDehUYVc/edit?usp=sharing

Kelly Lycan program outline:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jXHor41v_nV-K_pywFBZHLfdu7rpDKORyhcXlwlQkaQ/edit?usp=sharing

Keith Langergraber program outline:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C9GRXEYzjuRsKjR0n_P0ZVsfkqlnFC2v1nYJttAoud8/edit?usp=sharing

I have already broken down the timeline above into each day I was at the internship. I was at BAF from 12-5 each day and worked on program development for about 2-3 hours. Other tasks I did when I had completed my programming work for the day included:

• Gallery attending, talking to people who came to see the shows. During my internship, there was James Nizam’s show as well as Kelly Lycan
• Aiding in the installation of the artwork
• Running short errands (Chantal said she felt bad asking me to run errands but I had nothing else to do and wanted to help)

Moving Forward: I hope to hear back from Chantal about the school contact that she had in mind. The programs are largely dependent on if we have interest in them from schools or other organizations with groups they could bring in. If we can not secure a group for the current show or for Keith’s show I plan to adapt the workshops to possible future exhibitions. I am continuing communication with Chantal and we will create a more concrete plan in the coming week.

Larger Learning Points:

1. How to deal with failure: The programs were not a success in the way that I had hoped. I have learned to be adaptable and deal with challenges. This isn’t linked to this placement in particular however it was a valuable reminder that failure is a part of life. Things don’t always go the way we want them to and we need to be able to react in an appropriate manner and resolve issues that come up.
2. What goes into planning a program around an exhibition. This was definitely something I had not encountered in the past. I have worked in programming however not in a gallery. I learned that I need to work with the artist and how to think creatively to incorporate art theory into tangible learning experiences for children. If I am able to facilitate a workshop at BAF in the future this will be even more valuable because I will have the opportunity to see how this actualizes.

Resume Line (from my actual resume!):

Burrard Arts Foundation – Art Education Programming | September 2016 – Current

At BAF my role is to research and develop programming related to the exhibitions that are being held in the gallery space. Other duties include gallery sitting, engaging with visitors and correspondence with the program manager.