Blog . Adam Keating's internship at Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio
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Adam Keating's internship at Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio
09/10/13 | Posted by CIA Student | Posted in Career Center
Name: Adam Keating
Major: Game Design
Internship location: Young Audiences of Northeast Ohio
How you found out about the internship: CIA Career Center.
What you did:
I have been working as a Master Teaching Artist (MTA) for Young Audiences, which is a Cleveland-based non-profit organization that, among other things, works to give high school students the chance to experience what it is like to work in the arts. I partnered with Carla Carter, a filmmaker, working with a group of 13 student-apprentices from various high schools around Cleveland in order to give them a feel for designing, creating and promoting a game that they made on their own. In addition to game design, Young Audiences has offered programs in theater, film, fashion design, photography, animation, dance and many other forms of art, both preforming and visual.
As an MTA, it was my responsibility to instruct the apprentices in my section in the programs and practices that game design uses. That included programs such as Unity; Photoshop; Illustrator; and Blender, which is used for 3D modeling. After the apprentices learned the basics of each program, they went about planning for the ideas of their games, then on to creating them over the course of four and a half weeks. They practiced time management and budgeting their time to fit into the hours they had available; they practiced presentations to a large audience for their final demonstration of their games; and they learned about working as a cohesive team despite their differing ideas about what to make and how to accomplish their goals.
What you learned:
I learned how to effectively manage large groups of very different people and motivate them for their tasks. Probably most important for me, the experience reinforces pretty much everything that I have learned at the Cleveland Institute of Art thus far in my college career. Every day that I go in, there are different goals to accomplish. Each apprentice has new things he or she is doing, and often times these new things were confusing to them. Programming was a common issue, and as a result, I learned more about coding in Javascript and C Sharp than I ever had before. By teaching this group of high schoolers, I was teaching myself simultaneously.
What surprised you:
I thought that the apprentices would be more cautious and reserved. They would be taking on a huge project after all. Not the case in the slightest. Each and every one of them stepped up and took on responsibilities that I expected from one who was in college. Not only did they want to work on their games, they enjoyed it, and couldn’t stop. At one point I was concerned they would get finished a week early. They also learned the programs quickly. In less than six weeks, they learned the game engine Unity more effectively that some college students I have worked with.
How CIA prepared you to get the most out of your internship:
It’s thanks to The Cleveland Institute of Art that I learned about this internship and was prepared for it. The professors I’ve had for Game Design showed me what it takes to not only lead a program like this, but lead it effectively, as well as instructing me on how to use the tools that are needed to be successful in this field.
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