Transcript- Episode 84: Discover What Is At The Nexus Of Arts Education & Workforce Development, With Martín Hernández, The Senior Program Associate, LA County Department Of Arts & Culture Episode 84

Nov 29, 2022

00:00:00 Martin

When you are connected enough to the folks that you are actually serving and create not only a program structure that welcomes them, but also, like a data evaluation and a program evaluation that allows their perspectives and their experience to be really clearly stated, that lays the foundation for a really powerful program.

                

00:00:18 Martin

And we're now entering our 22nd year. We're at a point now where we are able to do data analysis on this program over five years, over 12 years, and go back to what students were saying in 2010 versus what students are saying now in 2022. And really, like I said, pushing ourselves to do things differently to be more expansive, to be more welcoming, to be more accessible to our students.

                

00:00:50 Christina

The workforce landscape is rapidly changing, and educators and their institutions need to keep up. Preparing students before they enter the workforce to make our communities and businesses stronger is at the core of getting an education.

                

00:01:03 Christina

But we need to understand how to change and adjust so that we can begin to project where things are headed before we even get there. So, how do we begin to predict the future?

                

00:01:15 Salvatrice

Hi, I'm Salvatrice Cummo, Vice President of Economic and Workforce Development at Pasadena City College and host of this podcast.

                

00:01:23 Christina

And I'm Christina Barsi, producer and co-host of this podcast.

                

00:01:27 Salvatrice

And we are starting the conversation about the future of work. We'll explore topics like how education can partner with industry, how to be more equitable, and how to attain one of our highest goals; more internships and PCC students in the workforce.

                

00:01:41 Salvatrice

We at Pasadena City College want to lead the charge in closing the gap between what our students are learning and what the demands of the workforce will be once they enter. This is a conversation that impacts all of us. You, the employers, the policymakers, the educational institutions, and the community as a whole.

                

00:02:01 Christina

We believe change happens when we work together, and it all starts with having a conversation. I'm Christina Barsi.

                

00:02:08 Salvatrice

And I'm Salvatrice Cummo, and this is the Future of Work.

                

00:02:12 Salvatrice

Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Future of Work Podcast. I am your host, Salvatrice Cummo. We are excited to bring you another guest for our Future of Work speaker series where we learn more about some of our panelists from the Future of Work Conference that was not too long ago, on November 8th.

                

00:02:30 Salvatrice

You certainly can watch the conference on PCC's YouTube page, or listen to our previous episode that features the panel discussion where you'll hear today's guest along with a few other familiar voices from the podcast. We'll be sure to enter that link in the show notes.

                

00:02:47 Salvatrice

But in today's episode, we will be learning more about the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture and what its role is in helping our students enter the workforce. We'll also hear about some key takeaways from the Future of Work Conference and a deeper dive into some of the topics we talked about.

                

00:03:05 Salvatrice

With that being said, we are excited to welcome Martin Hernandez, Senior Program Associate at the Los Angeles County Department of Arts and Culture, where he manages the Arts Internship Program and is one of PCC's strongest partner. Thank you, Martin.

                

00:03:20 Salvatrice

Martin is an experienced program manager working really at the nexus of arts and education workforce and local government and nonprofit, all of that kind of combined together - to truly provide and exciting opportunities and resources for our students in Los Angeles. We're excited to hear more about it, Martin, and we look forward to continuing this dialogue. Good morning, Martin.

                

00:03:41 Martin

Good morning. Thank you so much, Salvatrice, for having me today. It's an honor to be here.

                

00:03:45 Salvatrice

You're very, very welcome. And I just want to publicly, again, thank you for participating at the Future of Work Conference. I just got a ton of feedback that was really positive about your remarks and your responses to the questions and that panel discussions, so thank you very very much for that.

                

00:04:00 Martin

Thank you, I appreciate that. And what a great panel you all curated. I was up there with giants, so it was great.

                

00:04:05 Salvatrice

You were one of the giants, silly.

                

00:04:09 Martin

I'm getting there. Maybe I'm getting there. Hoping to get there one day.

                

00:04:13 Salvatrice

You are, you certainly are. Well, I'll tell you what I know a little bit about the LA County Arts and Cultural Department, but before we talk about really what that department is and what it's set forth to do, maybe share with us a little bit about kind of what led you to this work and why it's important, and why it continues to truly be an interest to you.

                

00:04:30 Martin

Yeah, I appreciate that. I'm oftentimes having to take the advice that I give a lot of our students or that our students here from some of our professional partners around how careers are not linear. And mine, definitely tracks in the same way.

                

00:04:42 Martin

I really kind of came out of college thinking that education was going to be my bread and butter, and thought I wanted to be a teacher. Very quickly realized through like AmeriCorps programs and things like that, and in classroom experiences that I was having that maybe that was not the best use of my talents.

                

00:04:58 Martin

And so, managed to segue into the nonprofit sector, really supporting students that were experiencing homelessness or coming out of the foster care system or currently in the foster care system towards enrolling in college or starting their careers. But always, with the goal of wanting to circle back into the arts.

                

00:05:17 Martin

For myself personally, I went to school for art history and history at UC Santa Cruz. And so, when this opportunity opened up at the, then, LA County Arts Commission, we actually were not a department at the time in 2018 when I joined. It really kind of represented a kind of amalgamation of the experience I had up to that point in workforce development supporting our students who kind of needed the most support and also, college access.

                

00:05:43 Martin

And the arts that I was looking to parlay into, and of course, the nonprofit sector. And so, even having you ask me the question of like what does it mean to be at the intersection of arts and workforce development and education in the nonprofit sector - I just want to say I feel like it's actually very rare that folks get to sit at that intersection.

                

00:06:01 Martin

And of course, the arts is very quickly trying to catch up in terms of the work the sector is doing to build inroads in workforce development. And of course, the Arts Internship Program is just one of those things, but I know we're going to talk about it in a minute.

                

00:06:16 Martin

But the Arts Internship Program has been around for 22 years. I could have participated in it when I was a high school student or a college student, and I had no idea that it existed. So, a big part of this work for me is personal in terms of wanting students who could have take advantage of this program to kind of further their career in the arts, and making sure that as many students know about it as possible, that that really drives my work.

                

00:06:38 Salvatrice

Yeah. Well, let's stay there for a minute. I mean, we talked a little bit about the internship program, so you touched on it a little bit. So, let's stay there for a minute and really talk about what it does for students.

                

00:06:47 Salvatrice

I mean, what have you seen - and then we'll circle back to really what the department of LA County Culture and Arts does, and there's more to it, but specifically, within the internships; what have you seen has been some of the outcomes of that engagement with our students in LA county?

                

00:07:03 Martin

Sure. So, I'll speak kind of generally and then more specifically. First, generally, this is a major workforce development program for the county. We're talking 230 paid internships every single year.

                

00:07:13 Salvatrice

Wow, that's amazing.

                

00:07:14 Martin

Yes, it's a lot.

                

00:07:15 Salvatrice

Holy moly, I didn't know that that was a lot.

                

00:07:16 Martin

It's a lot. And with our partners at the Getty Foundation, and at some point, I'll share about their program as well; our programs combined actually represent the largest paid Arts Internship Program in the country. And so, what that means is just in a general sense, 80% usually of our students, this is their first paid work experience period.

                

00:07:35 Martin

And so, we have a lot of data on just how students are utilizing this program to enter the workforce for the first time. But of course, on top of that, it is most oftentimes definitely their first paid experience in the arts. And I think so much of what I try to do in partnership with wonderful folks like yourselves and PCC, is just demystifying what it means to get a career in the arts and how one can build into.

                

00:08:02 Martin

And I want to be really clear - our program is specifically geared towards supporting careers in arts administration. So, these are 501(c)(3) nonprofits that are providing arts and cultural services to their communities for free or low cost.

                

00:08:16 Martin

So, these are not internships for dance or for acting or for music, but they are at organizations that are facilitating those arts and cultural services all throughout LA county. So, twofold, it's for a lot of our students, it's, "Oh my gosh, this is my first job period" and all of the wonderful highs and lows that come with that.

                

00:08:35 Martin

But then again, this additional layer of oh my goodness, and this paid internship is happening in the arts where for many of our students, they are told that pathway doesn't exist or that opportunity doesn't exist, or that it comes after many, many years of unpaid opportunities.

                

00:08:50 Martin

And so, again, it's a development program for the county as a whole, but when you look at it through the lens of arts and culture and providing inroads into the specific sector, it's an even, I think, more amazing opportunity.

                

00:09:02 Salvatrice

For sure. And what I really appreciated you saying that its focus is on arts and culture administration, because in academia, we talk a lot about the arts and culture as it relates to the creative side, but maybe not so much on the managerial administrative side, and the fact that the program really brings light to that and that we know it exists, but there's not a concentrated focus with an instruction around administration and arts and culture.

                

00:09:31 Martin

And it varies (I'm speaking broadly). But I really appreciate that the program really gets hyper-focused in that. Now, you and I met via email, I want to say like four years ago. It was about four years ago.

                

00:09:45 Martin

Yeah. And I think that was when Leslie was also kind of getting the Freeman Center off the ground at that point. Yeah.

                

00:09:51 Salvatrice

That's right. That's right. So, from then until now, from what I understood, the department wasn't really fully formed at the time. Much like we weren't really fully formed at the time either. We were both kind of growing and building our infrastructures. So, where are we now with the department? And maybe give us like a holistic view of what the department is set forth to do with the county.

                

00:10:12 Martin

Yeah, definitely. So, our Arts Commission, which is what we existed as before we transitioned to a department, had been around for 70 years. We started actually as the Music Commission for LA county, specifically charged with supporting music in LA. And over the decades and under various leadership, the Arts Commission had really grown into doing departmental functions, but really still existed as a commission underneath the executive office of the county.

                

00:10:39 Martin

And so, in 2018, which is right the time that I joined the department, the board of supervisors unanimously voted to establish us as the official LA County Department of Arts and Culture, which was mostly an administrative transformation, but really symbolically showed a vested interest by the supervisors in codifying many of our programs that had been running for many years.

                

00:11:01 Martin

And so, what we have seen since 2018 and 2019 in our transformation into a department is further investments and furthered support from the board of supervisors into our existing programs, as well as creation of new programs.

                

00:11:14 Martin

You know, just to speak about the Arts Internship Program for a moment, and then I can share about the department as a whole - the internship program when I joined was at 179 internships, then was bumped up to 203 internships and is now at 228.

                

00:11:28 Martin

So, that's just one example of the continued investment and support from the supervisors in our work. But the department as a whole is the local arts agency for LA county, we're very lucky to be in existence. As you can imagine, many cities and counties across the United States are not as fortunate to have the resources to have a local arts agency.

                

00:11:46 Martin

But our department actually has a number of divisions. So, alongside the grants and professional development division, which is where I am housed, we support three major grant initiatives every year. Our organizational grant program, our community impact arts grant program, and the Arts Internship Program are all situated under the grants and professional development division.

                

00:12:06 Martin

But we also have our colleagues and friends over in the civic art division, which manages the LA county arts collection. So, many of the statues and murals and things that you see across LA county, as well as the Commission of New Arts projects as part of new development or percent for art ordinance - anytime there's a new county piece of artwork or commission for the county at whole, that division is the one responsible for the project management and the budgetary responsibilities of that.

                

00:12:32 Martin

As well as our arts education division, which works very closely with all of the school districts in LA county, really around advocacy for continued robust and well-funded arts education in our K-12 school system, as well as students that are outside of the K-12. So, our non-traditional students.

                

00:12:50 Martin

So, they actually work with many of the juvenile justice camps with our colleagues in the probation department to make sure that there's arts instruction happening in all of the juvenile justice camps and halls. And then, I have a counterpart in arts education, shout out to Mia, who is actually starting to have conversations and doing work in workforce development for the arts at the K-12 level.

                

00:13:09 Martin

So, that's partnerships with Gladio that do some of that career exploration. We actually have an arts and culture focus on Gladio now for students to kind of learn more about careers in the arts.

                

00:13:20 Martin

And last, but certainly not least, I would be remiss if I did not mention them; our research and evaluation division, tiny but mighty, really focused on aggregating and condensing and producing reports around the strength and vitality of our field, the economic output of our field.

                

00:13:35 Martin

And of course, within the era of COVID continuing to kind of produce results that talk about the strength, the rebounds, the areas of loss for arts and culture for this sector in LA County. So, it's a lot. I think we're still the smallest department, we're not the newest.

                

00:13:49 Martin

Kelly LoBianco who was on the panel with me for Future of Work, the split of the Weeds Act department into two different departments, I think they're technically the newest departments in the county, but we're still the smallest. And we do a lot, I think, with the amount of people that we have.

                

00:14:04 Salvatrice

I think so too. And I think like kind of speaking to how the board of supervisors decided, hey, like we're going to form this into its own department, really demonstrates the active role of eliminating the stigma around arts and culture that you talked about at the Future of Work.

                

00:14:24 Salvatrice

So, let's switch gears a little bit because you touched on something very important, that there's still a stigma around arts and culture as it relates to other fields, but the fact that the county made this concentrated effort, and continues to make a concentrated effort around the arts and culture speaks volume.

                

00:14:40 Salvatrice

So, if the county is doing their work, my question to you is what could we as community colleges do on our end, to help guide students on these career paths in arts and culture here in LA, which we all know is the hub of entertainment and everything else. And there's such rich history here.

                

00:15:00 Salvatrice

Side note, I took a street food tour.

                

00:15:04 Martin

Uh, love it.

                

00:15:05 Salvatrice

That was so much fun.

                

00:15:07 Martin

I'm a huge foodie, so sign me up.

                

00:15:10 Salvatrice

In LA, and we were walking in LA and it's just listening to ... I mean, the food was great, but just listening to the history around the buildings and the sculptures, and the art was just absolutely amazing. So, how do we do more of that? Or how do we as a community college really support the momentum that the county has put forth?

                

00:15:29 Martin

So, firstly, I want to say that of course, there's a ton of extenuating circumstances for all the community colleges and everybody's looks different. But I know for example that in post-COVID, enrollment drops for the community colleges, difficult decisions need to get made around programs being offered and faculty and things like that.

                

00:15:51 Martin

But what is the arts offering at a community college. And what is the community college's commitment to continuing to champion the arts as a field of study within the community colleges is huge. And I would be remiss not to start there because I think what is it for me to come into a community college that is only offering three classes in a particular discipline.

                

00:16:15 Martin

That, I cannot overstate that enough. And I think, of course, we could talk about the arts as an economic driver, we can talk about the arts as a cultural resource, an opportunity for folks to gather and come together and share space.

                

00:16:29 Martin

But when you're talking about the community colleges, it has to be seen as a viable academic pursuit. And so, I think starting there and ensuring that community colleges continue to offer robust arts programming, not as an elective, not as a nice fun thing to do, but as a distinguished pathway towards degree attainment or otherwise, is very important.

                

00:16:52 Martin

I think secondly, I'm going to say this specifically for any of our like straight-up workforce development folks that might be listening, as somebody who held that and sat in that space for many years before coming to the department, we have to also keep really wide definitions of what success looks like and even what careers might look like.

                

00:17:13 Martin

Because I think the arts represent - I mentioned this a little bit on the panel, but the arts really could look very different. A career in the arts could look very different than a nine-to-five or a desk job or any of these other kinds of things.

                

00:17:26 Martin

So, I think when folks at the community colleges recognize that somebody who is trying to build a career in the arts may work for six months on tour, and then be unemployed or might do a gig here or a gig there, and a gig there, but do our workforce development outcomes, are they reflective of those kinds of opportunities? Are we able to have conversations with students around what it means to work for six months out of the year, and not work the other six, or to be working on a contract here and a gig here and a gig there?

                

00:17:56 Martin

So, I think equipping our career staff at the community colleges with the knowledge of what different careers in the arts might look like and how they might differ from other sectors, but still allowing us to kind of see those things as successful and worth pursuing is huge.

                

00:18:15 Martin

And I will sing the praises of the PCC career team forever and always.

                

00:18:20 Salvatrice

Oh, thank you.

                

00:18:21 Martin

It creates a completely different environment for student in the arts when they are walking into the career side of the institution with folks that really understand that. Because most of the time, your academic staff, your faculty, they do get it.

                

00:18:35 Martin

I mean, I know there are faculty at the community colleges that are traveling artists or gig workers or otherwise, involved a lot of the times in our nonprofits. I mean, we have a lot of our 501(c)(3) colleagues that are on faculty at different community colleges, so they know kind of how it looks.

                

00:18:54 Martin

But if there's a disconnect between that reality and what the services that a career center can provide, I think that's when we start to see students really dropping off and struggling.

                

00:19:05 Salvatrice

They're not really viewing what is possible. And I think there's a lot of advocacy work that needs to get done too, around the arts and culture that we haven't really kind of scratched the surface with. As a system, there are multiple avenues, multiple pathways and multiple possibilities for our students that they may not have known otherwise.

                

00:19:25 Salvatrice

I mean, you're right, and that frontline, the career team really is there. And I think that there's certainly some growth for our system of community colleges to focus on the career aspects of yes, arts and culture, but there's so much more. How do we infuse the knowledge and infuse what truly is possible with our career teams so they can best help our students?

                

00:19:45 Martin

And a lot of that is incumbent upon us as the department. Like we are very aware that we play a huge role in modeling what some of this might look like. Even what I said a minute ago about, hey, our program is really focused on arts administration, that is me making sure that I'm tailoring expectations because I think folks see the title and say, "Oh, I want to be an actor, I want to be a musician, and so, this is the career for me."

                

00:20:09 Martin

Well, yes, because we of course, are attracting students that are musicians, that are actors, that are dancers, that are in theater. But this is focused on arts administration. So, these are positions working in development and fundraising, grant writing, grant management, graphic design, social media, marketing, program side of things.

                

00:20:28 Martin

So, maybe working directly with students, teaching, painting, teaching dance, teaching music. So, it also means that when I go out to schools like PCC, I try to be very clear, you don't have to be majoring in the arts. Give us your business students, give us your marketing students.

                

00:20:43 Martin

We've had students that are in health sciences or in psychology or sociology because they're interested in art therapy opportunities. So, we also try to make sure we're not pigeonholing ourselves by presenting a program that's too narrow.

                

00:20:57 Martin

It really is intentionally wide and expansive so that we can continue to show folks the arts and culture sector is filled with folks from all different kinds of backgrounds that have all different kinds of specialties and everybody is needed to move the sector forward.

                

00:21:13 Salvatrice

I love that. In the dialogue with your panel, your fellow panel people-

                

00:21:18 Martin

Panel people, I love it.

                

00:21:20 Salvatrice

Panelists - were there any key takeaways that you thought, gosh wait a minute, there's something there, we need to unpack that a little more. Or just some aha moments that you thought, "Oh, I hadn't thought about that."

                

00:21:32 Martin

I really appreciated Sandra. I think Sandra Sanchez, she clearly is coming in from a very high-level perspective in terms of like what the long-term trajectory is for the community colleges. And I really appreciated her candor around like enrollment rates, birth rates, how those things can affect enrollment.

                

00:21:54 Martin

And I think she said we have to be keeping in mind that it's easier to retain a student than it is to recruit a new one. And of course, being able to hear from Will and his experience as a student, I think Will was basically saying like, "Y'all almost lost me. I was almost going to fall off. And it was because I got connected to the right people that really supported me and made me feel like I could stay."

                

00:22:20 Martin

So, just, I think, I would maybe point to the pandemic as maybe one of the factors, but just the candor and openness that everyone brought to the stage in terms of, "Hey, the way that we've always done things is maybe not the way that we need to continue to do them. And how can we be vulnerable with one another about some of those shortcomings or about some of those areas for growth."

                

00:22:42 Martin

I think in workforce development, my experience had been in prior spaces, a little bit of like a guarding of best practices and secret sauce so that you could hit your numbers because there were other - of course, this was the nonprofit space, but so that other organizations were trying to hit their numbers, and everybody's trying to pull from the same pools of students and partnerships.

                

00:23:02 Martin

So, just again, the candor and the openness of folks saying, "We have some big challenges ahead and if we don't come together and break down silos enough to be able to counteract some of those challenges, we might be in trouble."

                

00:23:16 Martin

I just really, really appreciated that because I think any of us that work in workforce development will tell you that like honesty and transparency is the number one, especially when working with my students. I think often about how you had to be open and honest with them about the opportunities that they were being given or not going to be given. And so, to feel that level of candor and openness in the room was really wonderful.

                

00:23:37 Salvatrice

I thought so too. It felt very natural and very comfortable and the dialogue was, you're right, honest, and we're letting all our guards down and we're just trying to figure this all out in this recovery phase that we're kind of going through. But this is the Future of Work Podcast and-

                

00:23:52 Martin

Yep.

                

00:23:54 Salvatrice

The Future of Work Podcast, and I'm really interested, I know our listeners are really interested - and you've shared a lot about the county Arts and Culture Department; if you had to say like this is really what I want our listener to walk away with in this conversation or walk away with period, in the theme and realm of the future of work, both in this conversation or your experience at the conference, what might that be?

                

00:24:19 Martin

Yeah, a big, big question.

                

00:24:21 Salvatrice

It is. It's loaded, isn't it?

                

00:24:24 Martin

I think of course everybody gives a different answer from their different perspectives, but I exist in a little bit of an interesting space in that I'm an intermediary for the program, I'm not doing the hiring. All of our organizations, they hire their interns, they go through their own processes. And so, I get a little bit of everything.

                

00:24:44 Martin

I get a little bit of the student perspective, I get a lot of the supervisor perspective, "Hey Martin, something went wrong with this intern. We have to troubleshoot, how can we support you?" I get a little bit from the colleges around like, "Hey, this is what we're seeing, this is what we're not seeing."

                

00:24:57 Martin

But I got to say, personally for me, I am always trying to center the student experience and the student perspective. And it's something that folks will say often, but I think operationalizing that is very different. And what that means a lot of the times is most likely pushing back against other priorities and other external factors that might be trying to come in and change a program or change something, or make it look different.

                

00:25:29 Martin

And what I have found is like when you are connected enough to the folks that you are actually serving and create not only a program structure that welcomes them, but also, like a data evaluation and a program evaluation that allows their perspectives and their experience to be really clearly stated - that lays the foundation for a really powerful program.

                

00:25:49 Martin

And like I said, we're now entering our 22nd year. You know, we're at a point now where we are able to do data analysis on this program over 5 years, over 10 years, over 12 years, and go back to what students were saying in 2010 versus what students are saying now in 2022. And really, like I said, pushing ourselves to do things differently, to be more expansive, to be more welcoming, to be more accessible to our students.

                

00:26:18 Martin

So, I shared on the panel that the program prior to the pandemic was 40 hours a week, only during the summer. Students started in June, ended in August. And for many years, students and organizations alike had been saying, "Hey, it would be really great for us to have year-round internships. The summer is busy for some of our organizations, but not all of our organizations."

                

00:26:41 Martin

And so, the pandemic gave us this opportunity to change a key structure of the program and make it year-round. And we are riding at a hundred percent approval rate from our students in the program. We have over 80% of supervisors and organizations saying that they prefer the year-round format or that the year-round format is working for them relative to the summer format.

                

00:27:04 Martin

And again, that came out of us saying, administratively, this is going to be a huge lift for us, but this is what we're hearing from our interns, from our organizations, so let's make that change. And I think it's made us a stronger program for that.

                

00:27:16 Martin

So, not only keeping yourself close enough to the ground where that you as a practitioner can hear those stories, hear those testimonies yourself, but also, building out a data collection protocol that allows you to really capture that and that data in realtime has been invaluable to us.

                

00:27:34 Martin

And I want to be clear, I came into a longstanding program that had those mechanisms, thanks to the hard work and awareness of my predecessors. And so, like I said, been invaluable for us, especially in the era of something like the COVID-19 pandemic where you have to kind of get your feet underneath you, and learn where you're going.

                

00:27:53 Salvatrice

I really appreciate the fact that you're monitoring the organization's input as well as the student experience input because oftentimes, we do one or the other. I mean, sometimes it's a bandwidth issue. And we get hyper-focused on, I'm going to say the customer, the student, that experience, which I love and appreciated the fact that you said like, "Hey, let's really activate that."

                

00:28:16 Salvatrice

Where say we want to center the student experience, well, then that means that we need to shift operations, we need to shift policy, we need to shift our mindset. There's major shifts that need to happen that may sound simple, but are quite complex, specifically in like a public system like community colleges.

                

00:28:33 Salvatrice

So, I really appreciate that and I also appreciate the fact that you're saying, Salvatrice, we're monitoring and we're listening to the organizations that we serve as well. Because you're serving dual customers, you're serving the upcoming talent, and you're also serving the existing organizations that are fostering and nurturing the incoming talent.

                

00:28:50 Martin

Yeah, and one of the things I've really appreciated, and Sandra, actually, again, mentioned this on the panel about like what does it mean when you shift the burden from the students to the institution? We've done a little bit of that thinking over the past couple years as well when it comes to professional development.

                

00:29:05 Martin

So, for our students, in addition to the internship, I also help coordinate with some of our partners additional educational opportunities that students can take advantage of to compliment their work experience. So, most oftentimes, these are panels either virtually or in-person where they're hearing from folks in the arts and culture sector and their career paths.

                

00:29:25 Martin

Of course, sometimes they get to just go to performances and see art, which is important for us. But what we've been doing over the past couple of years, is actually shifting some of our professional development focus from the students to the supervisors and offering professional development to them.

                

00:29:41 Martin

And this is all through a really, I just want to say clearly, a really strong partnership that we've had for many years with the Getty Foundation. The Getty Marrow Multicultural Undergraduate Internship Program is our sister program. They fund internships specifically in the visual arts space. So, mostly at the museums is what you will see. And we consider our program sister programs and we fund all of the artistic disciplines that are not visual arts.

                

00:30:05 Martin

But in partnership with them, last year, we were able to offer professional development sessions for our supervisors around how to support trans and non-binary interns in the workplace. How do you provide opportunities for intergenerational mentorship and learning within your organization as well as professional development around mentoring and supervising in the era of COVID through Zoom in these digital platforms.

                

00:30:28 Martin

So, that is on our end, kind of the duality that we also are kind of contending with. And we had said as a department for many years, that the Arts Internship Program prioritized mentorship and supervision and kind of a pseudo vocational training kind of OJT kind of model.

                

00:30:45 Martin

But we had never really put resources towards supporting our supervisors in developing that mentorship capacity and having those conversations. So, as part of that data collection, we asked the supervisors every year what are some topics that you're struggling with? What are some things that you want to discuss? And then leverage our resources and our connections and our partnership with the Getty to be able to provide that for them in the following cycle.

                

00:31:08 Martin

And just to speak briefly on, like I said, trans and non-binary identity in our program, we've started to see demographically the numbers tick up of students that are identifying as trans or non-binary or not cisgendered. And so, to see our supervisors say, "Hey, we don't know how to have these conversations," that's one way we can support them in saying, "Let's talk about that. Let's bring somebody in who can facilitate conversations around how organizations can better support and structure."

                

00:31:35 Martin

So, I think the workforce development pipeline for me is both ends. It's the young people coming up in the workforce and also, the organizations and companies that are trying to receive them. And if we can work on both ends of the pipeline within our program, we're going to try to do that. And we see that as important.

                

00:31:52 Salvatrice

I love that. Thank you so much. Thanks for that. And I learned so much from you just right now about those topics for the organizations, for their supervisors. We don't think that there's like, oh, there's a need - there's a significant need there, and as educators, we educate. I really appreciate you sharing that.

                

00:32:06 Salvatrice

This has been a delightful conversation and I really encourage the listener to click on that YouTube link and hear the whole conference because I'd love for them to hear all of your responses on the panel. But if there's a listener that wants to connect with you, Martin, what's the best way that they can connect with you?

                

00:32:22 Martin

Yeah, so definitely our website, www.lacountyarts.org - arts with an S - dot org, that is our website. And that will take you to kind of the main hub for everything that our department is doing, including the Arts Internship Program.

                

00:32:37 Martin

If you are interested in specifically the Arts Internship Program, you can go to www.lacountyarts.org/internships, and that will take you straight to our webpage on the website that talks a lot about the upcoming program and what we expect.

                

00:32:53 Martin

On our website, I encourage everybody to sign up for our newsletter, our department's newsletter. That is the best way to stay connected with all of our grant opportunities. Anytime something happens for the internship program, it gets announced through the newsletter. So, really encourage folks to sign up for that.

                

00:33:08 Martin

And folks are welcomed to connect with me on LinkedIn. I am, in all honesty, still learning the power of LinkedIn and happy to connect with folks on there.

                

00:33:16 Martin

So, if you are a parent or a student yourself or connected to somebody who is in school within LA county at this time, on April of 2023, the positions for the 2023 Arts Internship Program will launch. So, these 228 positions that I mentioned will get rolled out in batches starting in April.

                

00:33:37 Martin

In the beginning of April, you'll be able to go to our website and see the list of positions available for applying. Students can go directly to our website, they'll see the list of positions, they can click into it, it'll talk a little bit about the work of the position, what the expectations are, qualifications, and most importantly, how to apply.

                

00:33:54 Martin

It typically is I think the like number one day of traffic on our website as everybody rushes to the website each year. But again, it's 228 positions at over 140 organizations all throughout LA county. So, no matter where in LA county you are listening to this podcast, I guarantee there is an internship near you.

                

00:34:13 Martin

And internships will run starting in June of 2023 all the way to March 1st of 2024. So, we've got part-time positions, full-time positions in all the artistic disciplines that you can think of. And so, really, really encourage folks that are either students themselves or connected to students to visit our website in the early springtime to get connected to those opportunities.

                

00:34:32 Martin

And of course, starting in January, I will be going on my little countywide tour to all of the schools, including PCC, to talk directly to students about it. So, it's always an exciting time right around the turn of the year as we get ramped up for the next batch of internships.

                

00:34:48 Salvatrice

Fantastic. Thank you for sharing that. And we'll be sure to enter that into the notes as well as share it across our network.

                

00:34:54 Martin

Love that. Would love that. Again, so grateful for the folks at PCC and your team, Salvatrice, for getting the word out. PCC, I will say, I think has kind of been at probably the top of the list in terms of number of students participating in the program every year from the community colleges. So, a big thank you to you and your team for spreading the word and connecting your students.

                

00:35:14 Salvatrice

You're very welcome. That's really awesome to hear. Thank you very, very much for the partnership. There's more to come.

                

00:35:20 Martin

That's right.

                

00:35:21 Salvatrice

I look forward to future engagements and future programming.

                

00:35:23 Martin

Yeah, and I'm looking forward to learning from you all. You know, in terms of practicing what I preach, I'm no longer in the school space, so I really look to your teams - Jacqueline and Leslie and in terms of what we can be doing better or what we can change.

                

00:35:38 Martin

And so, again, really grateful also to have y'all's insight and input as we continue to make tweaks. I think the program will stay year-round for the time being, but there could be further tweaks down the road. So, really grateful to be in partnership with you all for those kinds of things.

                

00:35:53 Salvatrice

Yeah, fantastic. Thank you so much, Martin. We'll be chatting again soon, I'm sure.

                

00:35:58 Martin

Sounds great, Salvatrice, thank you so much again for having me.

                

00:36:01 Salvatrice

Thank you.

                

00:36:02 Salvatrice

Thank you for listening to the Future of Work Podcast. Make sure you're subscribed on your favorite listening platform so you can easily get new episodes every Tuesday.

                

00:36:13 Salvatrice

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00:36:24 Salvatrice

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