Say "Bye" to our Summer Intern!
Written by Galadra Plummer
August 2023
Galadra Plummer is an upcoming sophomore at Kennesaw State University as an honors student, attending for ceramics and philosophy. They have been the Greater Augusta Art Council’s intern for the summer, employed by the Georgia Institute of Technology through the Partnership of Inclusive Innovation (PIN). Galadra was competitively selected as an applicant for the Smart Community Corps (SCC), a summer program to involve college students of all ages and disciplines in innovation, leadership, and community service. Galadra chose this project over the other 35 in the state because of their personal background as an artist raised in Augusta and their desire to learn about new technology to help aid in the journey of other artists!
You can read more about the SCC program and Galadra here!
Now that you know where Galadra came from, what did they do?
The first few weeks of the internship were spent getting acquainted with the Arts Council in the form of making website posts, being a part of staff meetings, attending Arts Council events, and participating in public art making. Throughout the duration of the internship, Galadra was responsible for advertising the Artist Directory page and creating new platforms to bring together art consumers with art creators. The first way this project materialized was by building a new Venue Directory, an organized extension of the Resource Scrolladex that features searchable local businesses and venues that are open for booking of any artistic discipline. If you’re a band looking to book a spot in Augusta or an artist researching different gallery spaces to apply to, you can go to this webpage and quickly search for any options that you’re looking for!
The main purpose of their internship has been to create a “matchmaking” platform that brings together art enjoyers and art creators to engage with the local creative scene and build a strong sense of community. This has been accomplished with the creation of an all-new Arts Council Discord Server! Discord is a chat and voice call platform where anyone can come together in servers of their interest, meet new people, and share new ideas. Currently, this service is only open to Arts Council members to get the discussion started but will be open to the public later this year.
These resources are important because they help expand the network of opportunities for artists by directly connecting them to potential clients. The Venue Index serves as a free resource to help local artists search for opportunities to expand their reach, and the Discord server also helps expand opportunities by allowing networking, commission exchanges, and interactions between artists and non-artists alike.
Before Galadra leaves, they have one last job in this internship: to take their work outside of Augusta!
On Friday, August 4th, Galadra will travel to Atlanta on the Georgia Tech campus where the SCC Closing Ceremony will be held. They will present their super cool, colorful, and informative poster to potential employers and professionals in the workforce, as well as giving a brief speech explaining what they’ve done this summer.
This position has helped Galadra better understand and connect with the Augusta Arts community, partake in art events they were unaware of, and learn new skills in networking, setting up galleries, public art, email writing, WordPress, and Canva. (Seriously, who needs Photoshop when you have Canva?). They’ve gained valuable insight about the “behind the scenes” of being a professional artist as well as seeing how the gears of a nonprofit group turn.
After this internship, Galadra will return to Kennesaw for their sophomore year.
Galadra would like to thank the Arts Council for providing their instruction, guidance, and support throughout this short period of time. They will be looking forward to participating in future Arts Council events and will see you all at Arts in the Heart!
Some other fun pictures with Galadra from this summer!
