Bloomberg Arts Intern Therese Rubi on Exploring a Career in the Arts

By Therese Rubi, New York City Bloomberg Arts Intern

Through the Bloomberg Arts Internship program, rising public high school seniors receive paid summer jobs at non-profit cultural organizations in Baltimore, New York, and Philadelphia. Participants gain professional experience in arts management, exposure to overall workplace protocols, and college-readiness preparation. The program is designed to serve students curious about the many facets of a career in the arts. In the essay below, a 2018 Bloomberg Arts Internship participant details her experience in the program.

The Bloomberg Arts Internship has been a fantastic opportunity for me. I am an instrumental major at Talent Unlimited High School, and I love music. I’m a multi-instrumentalist and a composer, and I hope to continue making music for the rest of my life. A few friends of mine who had previously served as Bloomberg interns, mentioned the Arts Internship program to me. I was instantly intrigued and so I applied.

I was so thankful to be chosen as one of the 75 interns in New York City. After a week of orientation, I was assigned to Roulette Intermedium, an experimental music outlet in Brooklyn. There I was able to experience the business side of music. I saw how contracts are made, how the staff organizes its upcoming season, and all the nuances it takes to manage an arts venue.

As an intern, my colleagues entrusted me to draft listings, check files, and complete paperwork for the new fiscal year. The program was also great at taking us on site visits, where we heard panels with working professionals as well as artists of all disciplines. We visited the Whitney, BAM, and Urban Glass, just to name a few, and all were free of charge. One of the best trips was to Snug Harbor in Staten Island. The grass was a bright green and it smelled like a fresh breeze. Not only that, but it has a rich history as a military sanctuary for sailors, and has since become a great location for art exhibits. As we observed the innovative art, you also had the pleasure of the beautiful surroundings. These trips opened my eyes to all the possible career choices there are as an artist and showed me that people can follow their passion as well as make a comfortable living for themselves.

I was also fortunate to be in a group of incredibly talented interns who are also studying various creative disciplines. It was inspiring to collaborate with them, expand my artistic vision, and to see that they are just as passionate about their art forms as I am about mine.

Through this internship I improved my tech skills and learned the basic logistics of the performing arts industry, how to get around the city much more proficiently, and how to improve my own creativity by being inspired by others.

My job as a performer isn’t to indulge myself, it is to praise and entertain my audience, so they can remember the beauty of life, even if it is just for a few seconds. The skills I learned through the Bloomberg Arts Internship program are invaluable.

As a result of this program, I now know that I am going to study music production in college. I am truly grateful for this opportunity because just when I thought that nobody would take a chance on a poor city kid like me, Bloomberg Philanthropies did. I know that that life isn’t going to be easy, but now I am prepared to go forward toward a future that is brighter, a future that is stronger, a future that is beautiful.