Category: Microgrant Recipients

Fall 2022 Microgrant Recipients –  Celestina Billington & Joey Chen

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The Arts Administration Program (ARAD) at Teachers College, Columbia University previously awarded two students with Microgrants for Student Professionalization during Fall 2022.

Through the ARAD Microgrant Program and with generous support from the Arts and Humanities Department at Teachers College, ARAD proudly supports student professionalization activities on campus and beyond. This award champions special projects proposed by Teachers College student groups (with ARAD student membership), as well as professional development for individual students in the ARAD Program. Applications were invited through an open call process, and selected by ARAD faculty.

  1. Microgrant Recipient: Arts Admin Next (AAN) and the inaugural event “First Roundtable: ARAD X VAA”

Arts Admin Next (AAN) is a student organization founded by Joey Chen (ARAD ‘24) and Katerina Wang (ARAD ‘24). Connecting students in the pre-professional programs in arts administration with experienced practitioners in the arts industry, Arts Admin Next (AAN) aims to create a diversified community and an encouraging social adventure for arts administrators. 

On December 3, 2022, Arts Admin Next (AAN) launched its inaugural event, “First Roundtable: ARAD X VAA,” at TheBLANC gallery, bringing together current students and alumni from the Arts Administration (ARAD) program at Teachers College, Columbia University, and from the Visual Arts Administration (VAA) program at New York University. 

We were honored to have invited four alumni from both programs as our guest speakers, who are: Nicole Chen (ARAD ‘20, Post Sale Manager, Sotheby’s), Alexis Yuen (ARAD ‘16, Art Advisor, Manager of the Trade Program, Uprise Art), Erin Cao (VAA ‘19, Associate Director, Miguel Abreu Gallery), and Lauren Torrie (VAA ‘22, Development Assistant, The Metropolitan Museum of Art). The guest speakers shared their valuable experiences of the graduate programs and their career journeys during the self-introductions and roundtable discussions. 

(Photos by the Blanc Gallery)

2. Celestina Billington (ARAD ’23) is an artist and activist living in Manhattan. She has previously partnered with organizations that include Amnesty International and AmeriCorps VISTA. Currently, her direct action work is with vulnerable groups on COVID outreach with the nonprofit Good Old Lower East Side. Her artistic work is multidisciplinary and grounded in writing, experimental performance and social practice. She has been in productions at Museo de Arte Moderno, La Mama Theater and DiverseWorks. She is a founding member of the international collective “OURNA,” which produces original films, albums, podcasts and zines. In her free time Celestina enjoys traveling and caring for a pet turtle. 

The ARAD microgrant supports Celestina in covering costs for access to Adobe Creative Suite application tools often used in arts administration jobs, as well as for online courses in LinkedIn Learning that will aid her in mastering the various sought-after skillsets associated with creative software.

Student Advocates for the Arts, Covid-19 and the National Arts Action Summit 

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For the past five years, Student Advocates for the Arts has attended the nation’s largest arts advocacy event: the National Arts Action Summit and Arts Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C. This year, one of the largest SAA groups, composed of eleven members from across the Arts and Humanities department, was due to attend the summit from March 28-31.

To support our participation, we received an ARAD microgrant for our registration fees and accomodation in Washington D.C. We are grateful for the program’s support of our members, many of whom would not have been able to participate in the planned summit without these funds. Early in March, however, the COVID-19 crisis changed our plans. 

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Microgrant Recipient: Student Advocates for the Arts and their contribution to the exhibition: “Where We’re From.”

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Student Advocates for the Arts, in collaboration with the ARAD program, Gottesman Libraries, the Office of Diversity and Community Affairs, the Chinese Calligraphy Club, Nayion Design, and Dorsey Photos, hosted the opening reception of the Offit Gallery exhibition: “Where We’re From.”

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Fall 2019 ARAD Microgrant recipient Ulrike Figueroa-Vilchis shares her experience at the Third Cultural Policies Forum

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This Fall I had the honor to be an ARAD microgrant recipient for professional development. The grant helped me travel to Mexico where I presented in the Third Cultural Policies Forum organized by the Arts and Culture Observatory sponsored by my alma mater Universidad Iberoamericana and the Spanish Embassy in Mexico.

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Microgrant Recipient Sarah Lamade (ARAD ’20) Shares her Reflections and Lessons from the All-India Museum Summit 2019

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Second year MA student Sarah Lamade (ARAD ’20) at the Teachers College (TC), Columbia University received a microgrant this past summer. She attended the All-India Museum Summit in 2019. Sarah shares her experience with us here:

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Above: Sarah Lamade, this past summer in India.

I would first like to thank the ARAD department for granting me my second microgrant for professional development. I am grateful for this experience, and the juxtaposition between this conference and the conference I attended last year. I start with this not only out of gratitude, but also to position the conference I attended with this grant in stark contrast to the conference I attended with the microgrant I received last fall. This July, while I was conducting research in India for my Master’s Capstone Project, I attended the All-India Museums Summit 2019: India’s Museums in the New Millennium, held in New Delhi. Sponsored by the American Institute for Indian Studies and the United States Embassy, in partnership with the Indian Ministry of Culture, the conference was overwhelming guided by the bureaucratic structures of government institutions. On the other hand, CULTURE/SHIFT, the biennial conference of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, a grassroots activist organization, was participative, inclusive, and welcoming. While CULTURE/SHIFT centered around collaborative problem-solving, the Museum Summit centered around top-down sharing of best practices from already well-known success stories.

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Following Up with Spring 2019 Microgrant Winner, Gaosong Heu

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Following Up with Spring 2019 Microgrant Winner, Gaosong Heu

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                                            (Gaosong Heu taking notes during her layover in Portland, OR). 

Gaosong Heu is a Hmong American performance artist, published writer, arts educator, arts administrator and scholar of Hmong performance practices. She is a second year Master’s student in the Arts Administration (ARAD) program at Teachers College (TC), Columbia University. Her current studies are primarily focused on diversity within leadership, programming and evaluation in arts organizations. Gaosong’s work and career aspirations are informed by her passion for the arts, equity, access and social justice. In the future, she hopes to go back to get her Ph.D in Anthropology, American Studies, Feminist Studies or Music Ethnography with a focus on Hmong-American performance practices.

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Sarah Lamade, Fall 2018 Microgrant Recipient, reflects on the lessons learned during the CULTURE/SHIFT conference

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Funding from the ARAD Microgrant helped Sarah Lamade attend CULTURE/SHIFT, a conference for activists hosted by the U.S. Department of Art and Culture. Sarah shares the lessons learned and key takeaways from her experience.

 

 

 

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An Exciting Fall with ARAD Microgrant Recipient Student Advocates for the Arts

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By Carolina Cambronero Varela

Student Advocates for the Arts (SAA), a Teachers College organization founded by Arts Administration students, brought together a number of partners for programming on campus this fall. Their partners included New York University’s Advocates for Cultural Engagement, Art and Resistance Through Education (ARTE), Emerging Leaders of New York Arts, Friends of Japan, Global Citizen Club, Gottesman Libraries, National Art Education Association, Peace Education Network and Soul Haven Arts.

SAA was also awarded a Microgrant from the Arts Administration Program, which supported two components of a project that considered art and social justice issues: Brave Spaces: Where You, Me, and We Meet, a visual arts exhibition curated by Allison Peller and Briana Zimmerman at the Offit Gallery in Gottesman Library (October 4-31, 2018) and an interdisciplinary panel discussion, Liberating Imagination though Artistic Activism. The main objective was to unite people through the transformative power of art to raise awareness and activism for change.

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Catching up with Chad Rabago, Spring 2018 Microgrant Recipient.

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Chad Rabago attended Service Unites in Atlanta, GA this June with funding from the ARAD Spring 2018 Microgrant. We were eager to hear about his experiences! 

 

Service Unites is the largest service-related conference for non-profit, government, business, and civic leaders. Hosted by Points of Light, an organization dedicated to volunteer service and mobilization, Service Unites brings thousands together to collaborate and share knowledge, resources, and connections to awaken the power of people to change the world. I have wanted to attend the conference since learning about it during my year with AmeriCorps, and through a grant from the Arts Administration program I was fortunate to be able to attend for the first time!

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This year’s theme was “Igniting Civic Culture,” challenging attendees to cultivate a culture in which civic engagement is the norm, and every person is inspired, prepared, and mobilized to make a difference. Throughout the conference, I attended workshops on topics like branding through social media, engaging millennial volunteers, rethinking volunteer recognition and training, developing audiences without overspending, and forming college partnerships. I heard from professionals in various sectors, including higher education, consulting, museums, PR, and corporate philanthropy. At the conference’s opening assembly, we heard from various activists, politicians, artists, and celebrities, including Brooke Shields, Adam Rippon, Jesse Williams, Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, theatre producer Alia Jones-Harvey, and students from Parkland, Florida.

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In addition to attending the workshops and learning from so many experienced professionals, part of what made the conference so great was being surrounded by people who were all interested in working with volunteers in so many different ways. I met and connected with students, current service members, and professionals from various fields, including non-profit management, corporate social responsibility, human resources, venue management, start-up businesses, arts administration, government, and policy, and I am looking forward to following up with people for informational interviews and thesis research! It was really humbling and thrilling to share stories and resources with people who have similar career experiences. Whether it was the house manager at a folk music venue in Michigan who works with volunteers every day, or a specialist with AARP who coordinates volunteers digitally all over northern California, their unique perspectives enlightened my own experience of working with volunteers, as well as the career possibilities in this field.

 

Being in Atlanta for the first time, I also had the opportunity to visit The Center for Civil and Human Rights, World of Coca-Cola, Mercedes Benz Stadium, and Fox Theatre. I also did a whirlwind tour of Montgomery, Alabama, where I saw the former homes turned museums of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and Dr. King, Rosa Park’s bus stop, and the abandoned movie set of one of my favorite movies, Big Fish.

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It’s my hope that I will be able to attend future Service Unites conferences. Thank you to the ARAD Program for giving me this opportunity!

Following up with our Spring 2018 Microgrant Recipient, Beryl Ford.

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Our Spring 2018 Microgrant Recipient, Beryl Ford shared her reflections on Black Portraitures– BP IV: The Color of Silence, a conference she attended in Cambridge, Massachusetts with help from funding by the ARAD Microgrant.

 

It was such a rewarding experience to be able to use my ARAD micro-grant to
attend the fourth iteration of Black Portraitures– BP IV: The Color of Silence. As a
budding arts administrator, I found it truly inspiring to convene with the major players–
influencers, scholars, museum professionals—in the black art world who are thinking
critically about visual expression. This year’s conference theme– The Color of Silence–
was particularly compelling because it focused on the increasingly Diasporic nature of
the artists and ideas of the Black Portraitures community– finding its intellectual roots in
the African Diaspora as it is expressed throughout Latin America. As Henry Louis Gates
Jr. explained in his opening remarks, “The Color of SIlence refers to the visual
expressions of the national imaginaries prevalent throughout the African Diaspora, in
which political ideologies that negate racial differences render black subjects invisible.”


Each panel was thoughtfully organized to respond to and navigate this question
of invisibility. During the conference, I attended the following panels: The Curator, the
Artist, the Art Historian, and the Critic, Black Agency, Black Freedom: Portraits of
Survival in Word and Image, Portraits of Power: The Aesthetics of Resistance, and
Queer Identities. From each of these nuanced conversations, I gained a better
understanding of how the visual arts work to support activism and are deployed to shed
light on the experiences that are purposefully ignored and shrouded in darkness. As an
arts administrator, I believe that it is my responsibility to be aware of the barriers
precluding certain groups access to the visual arts! Given this, attending the BP IV
conference was invigorating because I felt as if I was part of a larger collective endeavor
that is working toward and is concerned with a similar goal.

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Thanks for sharing your reflections with us Beryl, we are so proud to be watching you bloom!