By Charlie Wein
So, you submitted your cover letter and your resume, you waited anxiously, then you got the call, they want to interview you for the job! But how should you dress? What should you say? How do you make yourself stand out from everyone else?
Students in the MSLCE program at Northwestern had the opportunity to spend a day with professional recruiter Amanda Schonfeld to ask her those questions and more. (more…)
By Jacob Nelson
Deana Haggag is the president and CEO of United States Artists (USA), a fundraising organization that grants fellowships to artists in different fields and from different backgrounds across the country. (USA recently announced its 2018 awards.)
During Thursday night’s first Speaker Series event of 2018, Haggag described the origins of USA. The nonprofit began in 2006 as a response to conservative politicians threatening to cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).
“The government wanted them to defund the artists entirely,” Haggag said, “And foundations were really disturbed.” (more…)
By Jacob Nelson
Lauren Schatzel first grew interested in the arts at a Spice Girls concert. She saw Sporty Spice do a backflip while “singing,” and asked her mom how such a feat was even possible. That’s when she learned the meaning of “lip-sync.”
Some people might have been disappointed by the realization that the performer they’d come to see was not exactly performing. Schatzel, however, was fascinated.
“Since that whirlwind of realization, I have been mesmerized by production, performance, and visual arts,” Schatzel said.
Even before that fateful concert, the Chicago native and San Francisco Art Institute graduate had long been excited about the arts. She grew fascinated with visual arts, for example, when she was four years old and her dad gave her a camera. Her parents’ encouragement has played an important role in Schatzel’s decision to turn that passion into a profession: When Schatzel was unsure whether or not she should commit to pursuing a career in the arts, her dad encouraged her to give it a shot.
“He later reinforced the motivation,” she said. “He told me that my inherent work ethic will always provide me success.”
After Schatzel graduate from San Francisco, she worked as an arts production instructor for adults with learning disabilities at Misericordia, a nonprofit in Chicago. The experience made her realize she wanted to play a larger role in creative organizational processes. She began thinking about careers that would allow her to advise and oversee creative teams.
Schatzel’s love of the arts is not limited by a specific creative field, which she says is one of the reasons she’s been so excited about the MSLCE program. She appreciates “the opportunity to engulf knowledge within all creative industries.” She aspires to run her own nonprofit gallery and art studio for young women lacking arts resources, ideally within Edgewater, the Chicago neighborhood where she grew up.
Perhaps the biggest surprise about Schatzel’s background, however, is the skill she has for a profession pretty unrelated to the arts: she’s an on demand hot water tank specialist.
“I am a licensed Navien Service Provider,” she said, “and I love sweating copper plumbing.”
By Jacob Nelson
Criss Henderson has held only one “real” job throughout his adult artistic career – as Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s executive director. After nearly three decades, he still finds both of these facts surprising.
“At 25, Shakespeare was the last theatrical genre I saw myself hitching my wagon to,” Henderson said during a recent interview. “I have been really fortunate to have devoted my life in the creative sector to an organization that has changed as I have changed.” (more…)
By Dominique Warren
Ultimately, students learned that the most important element of a pitch is the person delivering it. People invest in other people first, then their ideas. Students learned that the elements of a great pitch include your presence, craftsmanship of your idea using the PCAN (Problem, Cause, Answer, and Net Benefit) method, and knowing your audience. McKinnon, who has worked as a professor and producer, brought more than 20 years of successful programming in cable, broadcast, and digital platforms to class with her. Throughout the day-long sessions, she was a strong resource for her students.
By Charlie Wein
By Minda Cerva
By Jacob Nelson
Deana Haggag joined United States Artists (USA), a Chicago-based nonprofit that funds American artists across a variety of disciplines, so she could learn more about “how artists come to exist in this country.”
Before becoming the organization’s president and CEO, Haggag worked as the executive director for Baltimore’s The Contemporary, a nomadic and non-collecting art museum. The opportunity to join USA appealed to Haggag because it meant the chance to more closely examine how artists make their way in a world where financial sustainability is a daunting prospect.
“There’s little infrastructure for artists, and yet they keep creating,” Haggag said. “We represent an economy that is deeply underappreciated and manipulated in this country.” (more…)
By Jacob Nelson
There are two creative industries that fascinate Tate Glover: dance and film. Once Glover finishes the MSLCE program, they plan to pursue a career that fuses both of these industries together.
“Something that interests me is dance film — combining those two mediums to create new works of art,” Glover explained during a recent interview. “Things you couldn’t do on stage, but in film you manipulate the movement.” (more…)
By Jacob Nelson
Haley Baker’s passion for television began when she was in high school and she discovered the show “Friday Night Lights.” It was the first show she watched not just from the perspective of the audience, but from the perspective of the show’s creators.
“That was the first show I thought strategically about,” the MSLCE student explained in a recent interview. “I thought about why the producers made certain decisions. It was the first show that really spoke to me.”
The reason Baker is excited to work in television is because she wants her career to “contribute to the process of bringing stories to people every week that they love.”
“That’s the experience I had with TV growing up,” she said, and I just want that to be my job.”
What Baker finds interesting about television is that, until recently, she saw the medium as secondary to film in terms of entertainment and social significance. However, with the arrival of bolder programming in the form of comedies like “Modern Family” or network dramas like “This Is Us,” television to Baker has become “really powerful in society”.
Baker also enjoys television’s ability to stretch a story arc out over the course of many episodes or seasons, instead of being confined to the two hour limits of a movie.
“I love film, but I’ve always been someone who preferred to have the story drawn out over a long time,” she said.
The New York native and Northwestern graduate has returned to her alma mater for the MSLCE program, which she hopes will help her figure out where in the television industry she wants to work.
“I’m hoping that the program will give me a clearer idea of the field within the industry that I see myself pursuing.”
