Image caption: Helping to take photos to be used in the promotional materials

By Nadiah Halifi

I applied for this internship program to learn more about the arts industry and arts marketing. It opened my eyes to a new side of the university. After a year of being cooped up at home due to online classes, it reminded me how vibrant the student life at NUS really is (even with the ongoing pandemic).

Even as a casual arts and museum-lover, I was never a particularly artsy student, so the arts industry was new and uncharted waters for me. While daunting at first, there was an abundance of opportunities to learn about the arts through the various marketing functions.

The intern supervisors brought together interns under a variety of projects and gave us various tasks under the scope of marketing and communications. My main task was social media management. This included creating content for CFA’s platforms. The marketing team had plans to expand their content for a wider audience that includes the general student population who were generally interested in the arts. Thus, it was my assignment to conduct research and curate content that would appeal to this audience.

I was able to explore and run different campaigns, from artwork features, to a series to learn about different art forms to personality quizzes. While it was challenging to consistently come up with weekly content from scratch, it challenged me to be more creative. It was also a chance to pay closer attention to what other arts organisations are posting to connect with their audience! Additionally, being exposed to the back-end workings of social media (e.g. analysing data using different tools) was incredibly useful practical knowledge to learn about.

HERE! Arts Carnival 

The CFA Marcomms interns were also involved in the planning process of the HERE! Arts Carnival. It was amazing to see the event come to life after many weeks of Zoom meetings. The marketing interns were involved in the conceptualisation, planning and execution process of the marketing campaign for HERE! Arts Carnival. With the guidance of the team, we learnt how to craft key messages that could be translated into different touchpoints.

The planning for the marketing campaign also included the promotional photoshoot. This was also a rare opportunity to come down to the office and meet the student artists – seeing everyone be so enthusiastic was so encouraging to see!

A Look Into The Arts Industry 

CFA had also organized multiple industry talks for the interns, where a diverse panel of arts professionals shared about their journey in the field. To an outsider, the arts industry feels pretty elusive, so these talks were an insightful opportunity to listen to and connect with experienced professionals – from the Head of Communications of Esplanade, to Professors, to freelance artists.

The speakers shared about the ups and downs of working in the industry and how they began their career in the Arts. The speakers also shared practical career advice for us undergraduates, and how to get the foot in the door if we were interested in the Arts industry.

The Head of Communications at Esplanade shared some key insights of Esplanade’s digital strategies as they ramped up production of unique video content about the Arts in addition to shows being moved to online streaming platforms. On the other hand, Dr Khoo and Dr Koh spoke about how art is relevant to many disciplines – from the obvious (history) to STEM (science and engineering). Many schools of thought can have different perspectives on the same artefact or moment in history. They brought up the question: how can art help you in your career outside of the arts industry?

Conclusion

My summer with CFA has been a fruitful journey. It was unfortunate that there were no physical arts events due to the restrictions. Nonetheless, this experience helped to cultivate my love and appreciation for the local arts industry.