Over the past few months, I’ve been honored to benefit from the STEP Grant to help complete my STEP Signature Project. By pursuing an Internship at Urban Arts Space for my STEP Signature Project, I learned more about how arts institutions operate, learned how to create engaging and interesting virtual events, and improved my collaboration skills by working remotely. By planning exhibitions, planning virtual events, and conducting interviews with artists exhibiting at the gallery, I learned and grew as a student and a Buckeye.

Since the Fall of 2019, I’ve been an Exhibitions Intern at Urban Arts Space. Urban Arts Space is Ohio State’s student gallery, spanning from our main downtown location, our location on campus, called Hopkins Hall Gallery, and our newest endeavor, the Hybrid Arts Lab. During my junior year, between the Fall of 2019 and the Spring of 2020, I mainly worked as an Exhibitions Intern, planning and installing exhibitions across our galleries. Yet, at the beginning of the pandemic, I joined our Engagement Team and began a new segment of my role. Throughout my time under the support of STEP, I’ve been navigating working in an arts institution amidst a pandemic. This experience is something that has been stressful, scary, and tolling, yet working at Urban Arts Space has provided much-appreciated enthusiasm and purpose to my life. For the first time in my career, I’ve felt fully engrossed and appreciated at my place of work. By relying on the collaboration and communication of my team members, I’ve realized the importance of a team-like structure in a place of work. By working in an evolving, uncertain world, everyone at Urban Arts Space had to be patient and flexible with the uncertain future. Amidst these conditions, I felt like my co-workers and I were working with an important purpose of creating engagement and artistic inspiration during a dark time. Throughout my time under STEP’s support, I saw myself grow as a flexible, collaborative individual.

Specifically, work on Urban Art Space’s Engagement Team provided great personal transformation. Before March, I had conducted a few interviews for Ohio State’s radio station, but I had never conducted live interviews or conversations with multiple people. After March and throughout my semester with STEP, I conducted handfuls of recorded or live Zoom interviews with students, faculty, and community members. I wrote, coordinated, and facilitated each of these interviews, increasing my skills as a program coordinator and engagement specialist. Throughout the semester, I feel that I’ve transformed into a more confident, organized, and personable collaborator and person. Some of the interviews I organized this semester were particularly transformative. In particular, in October I facilitated an interview featuring two professors, one graduate student, and one staff member from Urban Arts Space. The interview was a promotion for a collaborative show between the two professors, the graduate student, and a group of Ohio State students. The interview involved a lot of moving parts and required more in-depth and thoughtful questions that engaged every interviewee in the conversation. My confidence as an interviewer and leader grew during this experience. I’m very grateful for the support of STEP and will look back on this transformative semester fondly.

The events that sparked transformation for me during my time supported by STEP were definitely the interviews I mentioned above, as well as weekly check-in meetings with my co-workers. Prior to the pandemic, we didn’t have weekly staff meetings with the full-time staff and student interns. Yet, I really appreciated the structure and communication these weekly staff meetings brought. In past internships, I’d been involved in weekly staff meetings, but in my role at Urban Arts Space, I felt like I had more of a purpose and place in these meetings. As an intern with lots of tasks to complete, I always had progress and accomplishments to report. These meetings created a sense of purpose and community for me as an intern.

As stated above, during my time supported by STEP, I joined the Engagement Team. Therefore, the boss that I reported to the most changed. I began meeting with the head of operations much more often, compared to the head of exhibitions. This relationship molded into a communicative, fruitful, and wonderful professional relationship. Instead of just seeing this boss during weekly team meetings and communicating via the occasional email exchange, we met once a week on Zoom to touch base. Having this meeting in my weekly schedule created built-in deadlines for me to complete tasks. Additionally, meeting one-on-one increased my morale as an employee, considering how much I’d missed face-to-face meetings during the pandemic.

Additionally, this boss provided guidance and feedback on the questions I prepared for each interview I conducted. Before sending the questions out to my interviewees, this boss read the questions over and provided much-appreciated feedback or critique. In the future, I look forward to having more communicative and strong work-place relationships with my coworkers at future jobs. By making time for one-on-one meetings, this boss and I strengthened our relationship and got to know one another as friends and not just co-workers. Throughout my internship this fall, I’ve realized the importance of communicating and checking-in with co-workers during the pandemic, or any other time when contact and communication are limited .

As I look forward to my post-graduate plans, I am very excited to apply my experience at Urban Arts Space to my future places of work. While supported by STEP, I grew as a communicator, collaborator, and artistic professional. By learning how to conduct professional interviews, enhancing my virtual and remote collaboration skills, and learning patience and flexibility while working through a pandemic, I have transformed into a stronger and more confident person. One of the values of working for Urban Arts Space is that the gallery partly student-run. Therefore, students have an influence and impact on what happens at the gallery. Therefore, when I enter into the workforce with my first full-time post-graduate job, I will have confidence and capability thanks to my time at Urban Arts Space. Additionally, learning how to successfully run an art gallery during a pandemic is a skill I never thought I would obtain. Yet, I am incredibly proud of the innovation and excellence my co-workers and I have achieved during these past nine months. As I begin interviewing for post-graduate positions, I know I’ll have fruitful lessons and anecdotes to share about my time working at Urban Arts Space.

As a community and as individuals, we have been tested and burdened in myriad difficult ways this semester. Working at Urban Arts Space with the support of STEP filled some of my missing needs for community, communication, and support. The organizations I will begin applying to work for are mostly art, city planning, and community planning based. Therefore, these organizations rely on their staff to reflect their values of engagement and community. Working at Urban Arts Space while supported by the STEP grant has provided me hands-on experience with art and community engagement. Therefore, my time at STEP has gifted me with fruitful and worthwhile professional and personal experience. As I begin my last semester at Ohio State, I will remember how fantastic and transformative it was to complete my STEP Signature Project.