In my second semester last year I had the pleasure of an internship for credit with a local Baltimore non-profit called Art on Purpose. Run by Peter Bruun, the organization promotes community art through workshops,  community exhibitions, and established programs in support of community service.

We had a community involvement fair here at MICA first semester and there I got to talking with the representative from Art on Purpose at the event who mentioned that the organization was looking to make some changes and improvements to their website and that they might have some work for a web / graphic design intern in the coming months.

I exchanged emails with several of the employees there and we set-up a meeting time for me to interview with the whole team. After explaining some of my ideas for the site as well as presenting my skills concerning what I could bring to the organization in a design sense, we agreed to an internship for credit as often as I could come in.

As a result of their deep involvement with the surrounding community Art on Purpose had plenty of work for me to do ranging from grass-roots advertising to exhibit displays for community art. Like any other job I was given the specifications for a project, I would design the piece, and then submit it for approval to my supervisor. A lot of the projects were for somewhat out of the ordinary items such as refrigerator magnets, exhibition invitations, and placards for gallery display.

The internship gave me daily opportunities to deal with real world work, resolve the presentation of lots of information in a visually pleasing way and exercise my powers of prioritizing that I talked about in the previous article.

Selected Works

Speaking of Silence

One of the projects that Art on Purpose has started is called Speaking of Silence in which the voices of various residents of Baltimore telling their stories about their city and about their neighborhood. Art on purpose set up listening stations around the city at various times and locations for all members of the community to listen to the stories. I was tasked with the project of creating a flier which would include all of the times and locations for listening stations in the upcoming weeks. With all that information it was a challenge to organize it effectively but after much review, I came up with the following solution.

Maps on Purpose

Another one of the larger Art on Purpose projects which I created a lot of the gallery presentation graphics and placards for was the Maps on Purpose project. Maps on Purpose was a series of exhibits divided by neighborhood that displayed maps created by a communities members that considered how residents see and shape their own communities. These maps were displayed at the Walters over a series of weeks, each needing a unique invitation and set of gallery display materials to match the community.

The Experience

My internship at Art on Purpose was fantastic. Working with them as well as taking 15 credits was a challenge but the folks there were flexible on schedule and workload. The experience its self was great but it’s always good to have the added benefit of completing the internship for credit. Thanks to the Career Development Center at MICA I was able to fulfill a requirement by completing some simple paperwork and keeping track of my hours at Art on Purpose. I got to work on such a broad range of projects during my time there and I feel it was a strong period of growth in my design development and I really appreciate my time there.

How Do You Network?

My entire experience with Art on Purpose came from a chance conversation with some of the employees there. What’s the strangest way you’ve found your next client or job? What are your networking strategies? Please share below in the comments.

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