A CalArts Job Program Harnesses Common Sense to Serve Creativity

Ten years ago, Nat Dean had a new degree in art from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia but no idea what to do with it.

“No one showed me how to survive,” she said. “I came out of college without really knowing how to look for a job.”

Dean’s predicament was a common one for arts graduates of her day because, said Warren Christensen, CalArts’ director of career development and placement, colleges and universities did not create job-placement services for arts majors the same way they did for students in other fields.

“You could almost say that arts placement, in any meaningful sense, just didn’t exist,” he said.

As part of its effort to lure students to its campus, CalArts five years ago hired Christensen, a former stage director, to develop a job-placement program.

Christensen developed a student internship program--a concept that was unusual at arts schools but that for years had been commonplace in business, education, engineering, technical and other fields.

He recruited firms to hire students while they were still at the school.

In the past three years, 30 to 40 students a year have been placed to work on everything from a three-week project setting up a booth at the Los Angeles Art Fair to a yearlong job teaching art at a college preparatory school.

Interns also are working at Universal Studios, the American Film Institute, NBC’s “Today” show and the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, which are among 150 employers who have participated in the placement program.

The goal of the program this year is to place 50 students and to recruit more firms, Dean said.

Christensen also instituted “survival courses” for artists. Now included in CalArts’ curriculum are several “how-to” courses.

“Most arts students haven’t the slightest idea how to put together a resume, to manage their finances, to market themselves or to fill out a tax return,” Christensen said. “I just used common sense. I recognized that what we were doing was training artists to be unemployable.”

Last year, the federal Department of Education designated the CalArts program as a model for other colleges and universities and presented the school with a $53,000 grant to help Christensen continue his work.

CalArts was the first visual and performing arts college to receive a grant in career development and placement, Christensen said.

So little existed in job placement programs for writers, arts, music, dance, film and theater majors, he said, that CalArts decided to share its program with other colleges and universities.

In May, 1983, a conference on the placement of artists organized by Christensen at CalArts attracted 50 educators representing schools and universities throughout California.

“The conference was the first of its kind,” Christensen said. “Even many major universities hadn’t a clue as to what to do with an arts major.”

Since then, he has conducted nine similar conferences throughout the country for organizations such as the Western College Placement Assn., the National Assn. of Student Employment Administrators and the National College Placement Council, an organization that previously had focused almost exclusively on high-tech fields.

Founded Placement Network

Three years ago, because of a demand for information from educators unable to attend conferences, Christensen founded a National Network of Artists’ Placement. About 268 career counselors, faculty members, private-sector career specialists and individuals belong to the network.

For dues of $30 a year, members receive a quarterly newsletter, a handbook and four books containing arts placement information collected by Christensen.

Three of the four books sold out their first printing of 500 copies. One of them, Christensen’s National Directory of Arts Internships, has been revised, expanded and is now going into a third printing, he said. The second printing of 1,000 copies sold out within a few months, Christensen said.

He cautions students that an internship in the office at a museum or a film studio is not a job--only a means through which a young artist can develop skills necessary to obtain the job he or she desires.

“The arts world hires from within its own ranks,” he said.

Foot in the Door

The aspiring singer who obtains a job writing grants or working in the office for a performing arts center, Christensen said, has a better chance of being hired as a singer there.

He also advises arts students not to expect too much too soon.

“I tell them to go to work in someplace like Minneapolis for 10 years, get a job, have a family--then go into the professional world,” Christensen said. “But, as an artist, you must continue to practice in your field. An artist can expect to be in the school of hard knocks for about 10 years.”

CalArts’ other books include a bibliography of publications and organizations that provide resources to artists and “For the Working Artists,” a survival guide for actors, musicians and other artists who manage their own careers.

The guide, published last month, was financed with grants of $2,500 each from the Weingart and Ledler foundations.

Now Has Assistant

Last year, Christensen hired Nat Dean to help him with the program. The former CalArts student coincidentally had been teaching similar survival courses to artists in San Francisco.

“You just don’t go right out and be an artist,” said Dean, 32. “A lot of artists don’t make their livings from art, so they need to find ways to support themselves while practicing their art. I started being hired at art schools to give survival workshops.”

Now back at CalArts, she is learning how to make a living in administration, she said, while working in her artist’s loft in Little Tokyo to create drawings and sculptures.

“Artists really live on the fringes of society,” she said. “We’re surviving outside the margins while finding ways to support ourselves in the mainstream.”