A Day in the Life of a Kennedy Center Intern
Ashley Brown, Turnaround Arts Intern
Name: Ashley Brown
College major: Communication
Internship placement: Turnaround Arts
Turnaround Arts is a school-reform program that utilizes the arts as a tool to boost academic achievement and engage students in under-served public schools across the nation. We work with 81 schools in 17 states and the District of Columbia. Each day at Turnaround Arts is different, but here is an idea of the things I get to do on a regular basis!
9–10 a.m.: The first thing I do is check Dropbox to see if any morning announcement videos have come in from Turnaround Artists. At the beginning of every school year, Turnaround Artists like Josh Groban or Elizabeth Banks send in videos to welcome back students to another year. If there are videos, I upload them to Vimeo or Youtube, write a caption and brief description, adjust settings as needed, and send it off to my supervisors.
The second thing I do is a media sweep. I look for coverage of Turnaround Arts across various media platforms. Then, I save whatever articles I find into our shared spreadsheet and publish approved coverage to the Turnaround Arts website as well as our newsletter when appropriate.
10 a.m.–12 p.m.: I’m working on the Turnaround Arts newsletter now. We use this newsletter to connect and keep our supporters in the loop about the great outcomes of arts integration in our schools.
I place media coverage that I recently collected in the “In the News” section, select and crop images, and write captions and brief descriptions to pair with them. These pieces highlights the progress, impact, and reach of Turnaround Arts.
12–3 p.m.: There are school visits approaching, which means I must update and create school overviews and lookbooks for the visiting artist and schools. School overviews tell the story of the school’s past, present, and plans for the future. Lookbooks provide visuals and biographies of all parties involved in the visit (e.g. the high-profile artists, principals, local program directors, and the Turnaround Arts team).
School visits bring artists to one of the Turnaround Arts schools to spend the day with students. The artists may engage the students with activities related to their craft, or they may assist teachers in their lessons. For example, Turnaround Artist and former White House photographer Amanda Lucidon led a photography workshop at Turner Elementary school in DC during her visit. I was lucky enough to attend this school visit, so I had the opportunity to take pictures for social media, too.
I end my day by writing down a list of tasks I need to complete for the next day!
Looking for an internship to help explore a career in the arts? Check out the Kennedy Center’s internship opportunities and apply to join the talented ranks of our #KenCenInterns!
