The Employer Relations team is working with employers to highlight different aspects of their organizations, from applications, to culture, to diversity, and more. We plan to showcase employers from across all career industries throughout the semester, so check back soon for more Employer Insights!
Mass Cultural Council
Hi! I’m Amy. I work at Mass Cultural Council. I’m a Program Officer on the Creative Youth Development team. I graduated from Tufts/SMFA in 2021, with a B.A. in Sociology and a B.F.A in Studio Art.
What is the Mass Cultural Council?
Mass Cultural Council is an independent state agency, charged with bolstering the state’s creative and cultural sector, thereby advancing economic vitality, supporting transformational change, and celebrating, preserving, and inspiring creativity across all Massachusetts communities. We achieve these goals through various grant programs, services, and initiatives to advance overall awareness of the creative and cultural sector.
What’s my role?
I primarily administer the Creative Projects for Schools grant program. This program provides funding for school-based projects for K-12 students. It funds various activities, such as teaching residencies, field trips, workshops, and more, which allow students to uncover hidden talents, discover and express their own ideas, build confidence, explore the natural world, and connect to their history and community. I work with people at schools and cultural organizations, including teachers, principals, arts administrators, and
teaching artists, to help them write and submit grant applications.
What does my day to day look like?
My daily tasks and the people I work with will change depending on where we are in the grantmaking timeline. Generally speaking, the grant program I administer runs every year, so my work also operates roughly on a one-year cycle.
Drafting the guidelines and application:
Before the program opens, I’ll write and revise the program guidelines and application. My day will involve internal meetings with my team and other teams for feedback. This will sometimes involve several rounds of review and revisions by my colleagues and I.
Finally, I’ll receive approval that the guidelines align with our broader agency goals. This means that the guidelines are ready to be published and the grant program is ready to open and start receiving applications. I might also work with our agency’s public affairs team to provide information sessions, answer questions, and get the word out about the program.
Supporting applicants:
After the guidelines and applications open, my role switches to primarily external-facing customer support. Because I work with schools, many classroom teachers or parent-teacher organizations have never applied to a grant before. I spend most of my time answering emails and phone calls about the guidelines and the online application.
Reviewing applications:
After the application deadline, I’ll work with our grants team to review the applications we have received and confirm the list of applicants that will receive funding during this cycle.
Administering contracts and payments:
After successful applicants receive notification of their grant award, I’ll work closely with our fiscal team to make sure people receive their contract paperwork, complete it, and submit it correctly so that they can receive the funding. Again, this requires a lot of customer support!
What are some challenges in this line of work?
Mass Cultural Council sits at the intersection of government, grantmaking, and the arts sector. Being on the Creative Youth Development team also connects my work with schools and youth across Massachusetts. It can be difficult to balance the priorities of these different spaces, like when I have to explain the requirements of our grant program to classroom teachers who may need to meet their own curriculum requirements and who have never applied to a grant before. But I feel most rewarded when schools, arts organizations, and teaching artists collaborate successfully to deliver a powerful arts education experience.
What type of student would excel in this field?
A student who’s interested in arts administration may also be an artist themselves. Organizational and interpersonal skills are very important to this work, along with an interest in the arts. As an artist myself, I share vocabulary with the other artists and cultural organizations I work with and implicitly understand the value of their work. I’ve learned a great deal about the sector and communities across Massachusetts, but it was helpful to start with a solid, personal foundation. Still, arts administration, especially in a government and grantmaking space, involves noncreative, administrative tasks and knowledge of things like legal status, financial documents, contracts, and more. But these are necessary skills to support the creativity of the artists and organizations in our state.
