African American Arts and Culture Complex Fall 2014

Blog Post 1

Hey my name is Brandon Nakamura, I am a Junior marketing major here at the University of San Francisco. I am from Honolulu, Hawaii, and I am 20 years old. My current goals are to graduate from USF and then enter into the sports management graduate program. I love helping people in whatever way possible, and this internship will help me to put my business skills to work in order to attain these goals. I volunteer at many community service events, and I am a part of Chi Upsilon Zeta, which is a social justice fraternity here at the university. I feel like this is another good opportunity for me to help people in our community, and to exemplify the Jesuit values that our university stands by.

This semester I am interning at the African American Art and Cultural Complex (AAACC). The AAACC’s is a community based, 501(c)3 arts and cultural organization. It provides a after-school program space for the youth of the community, areas for local artists to promote their work, and also a resource for residents and visitors of San Francisco. The complex includes 30,000 square feet of community art space that includes a theatre, art gallery, dance studios, recording studio, multi-use spaces for meetings.Their mission is to empower the community through Afro-centric artistic and cultural expression, mediums, education and programming.

I have only had a couple days spent working at the AAACC, and my role has currently been to assist my supervisor (Tamika) in whatever she needs help with. Within the past week or so, I have helped write up descriptions for the job opening that the AAACC is having. I also worked as the front desk attendant, and helped with the planning and moving of equipment for the Odyssey group out in Hayes Valley. Tamika and I discussed many goals that we want to accomplish this semester. Currently we have decided that I will help make things easier for her by organizing all of the documents by making them electronic, and easier to keep track of. I will also be helping in the planning of a large community event to be held in December. It is probably going to be a large scale coat drive, and I am responsible for the planning, and marketing portion of it. Lastly, I will be using my skills in marketing to help them with any events or projects that need to be done.

Blog Post 2

This week, I was finally able to get into a regular schedule with my community partners. I worked on a lot of different things this past week. First off, I just want to say that I love working at the AAACC, and my 2 community partners are wonderful, and I really enjoy coming in to work. This week, I started off by setting up the banner, and the social media aspect for an upcoming Halloween event that is going on at the AAACC. Basically, there is a dance for the little children, and a movie night for the local teens in the area. My job was to help to make some of the activities for the younger children, as well as plan some of the designs for the set up.

I was given the responsibility for doing some of the marketing and advertising for this event. I decided that we should use social media platforms like facebook, and twitter to not only have a facebook event, but to have some of the kids that were at the AAACC to invite 50 of their friends, and to tell those 50 to also invite 50 more people, in order to have a lot of buzz for this event. By the end of the week, I checked back, and there were over 1000 people that were invited to the event. I was really happy that I was able to use some of the marketing strategies that we learn about in class, and put them to use in effective ways. Because there are limited resources, most of the ways to advertise this event were not options, thus social media marketing was the cheapest, and most effective way to go. For me, I was just really happy and surprised that my idea was able to be so successful for the project at hand.

The other thing that I did this week, was to help to organize some of the documents that were getting backed up in the office. The people at the AAACC have a lot going on, and they are all really busy. Even though the organization of documents wasn’t the most brain challenging tasks that I could have done, Michelle (one of the women in the office) was really happy that I helped out, and freed up some of her time. For me, I really want to help out the AAACC as much as possible, so if I have to organize documents every once in a while I am perfectly alright with it.

Something that I learned from working at the AAACC this week is that I really do enjoy being a part of the planning as well as the marketing sides of any project. I really enjoyed discussing with Mohammed the ways in which we could help to spread the word about the event. I also liked being a part of the planning of the event, and being able to give some ideas for the many different stages of planning. I look forward to the coming weeks with the AAACC, and I hope that I can help them as much as possible, and learn a lot at the same time.

Blog Post 3

This week was a very positive one here at the AAACC. The vibes here have been really good, especially because the Giants are the World Series Champions!! This week I continued work on my big project for the the end of the semester which was the Coat Drive that will take place this December. These last couple weeks, I worked closely with Mohammed to find funders that could either provide coats for the drive, or people that would be willing to make donations to help out. I contacted some of the big clothing retailers that are here in the city including: Macy’s, Gap, Burlington Coat Factory, Ross, and Marshall’s. Something that really helped me with these calls, was my past experience that I had working with the University annual donations department.  For about 2 years I worked in the University’s Annual Giving department, collecting donations for the school, and all that experience really helped when talking to these people. This was a skill that I really didn’t think that I would use after I left the calling center, but it really came in handy. There were a couple challenges that I did face while making these calls. Some places were not willing to make donations, and others had a long process that we didn’t have time to complete before our coat drive. However, with some persistence I was able to get several key partnerships that were willing to help out.

Some of the other things that I helped with this week were to help with some of the inventory taking from the recent art gallery. I just had to record some of the artworks that were left in the gallery that had not been purchased. I also worked with one of the supervisors named Michelle, and we worked on making some graphs and tables to be used for some research project. The last thing that I did this week was to help find the information needed to complete some of the applications that were required in order to receive donations and funding from some of the big corporate sponsors. I worked with Michelle to complete the applications for Marshall’s, as well as Ross.

This week I learned a lot about the many different processes that are required when doing any project. Events don’t just happen in a day, and are not planned over night. While working these last couple weeks, I realized that there are a lot of little things that may be tedious, but have to be done in order to have a successful event. I also learned that even after events are done there are a lot of things that have to be done. For example, after the art show was finished, everything had to be cleaned up, carpet cleaners needed to be hired, inventory needed to be taken, artists needed to be contacted, and we had to review how he event went. What I really feel that I learned this week was the reality of how much goes into planning and running an event, and the overall effort that has to be put forth.

 

Blog Post 4

These last few weeks here at the AAACC have been really great for me. I really enjoy coming into work every time I am here, and I love working with everyone here. This semester my big project that I have been working on the entire semester was the big coat drive that was going to happen during the middle of December. I recently learned that we were no longer going to have the coat drive, but rather we were going to do a toy drive for the children instead. Luckily, a lot of the research that I had conducted, and the applications that we had started also had sections where we could request toy donations. Also, in a recent call to the fire department, we learned that they had a lot of toys that were actually looking to donate, so we were able to lock in a large sponsor for our drive.

Throughout this year I have been a part of a lot of projects, and helped with many of the different departments here at the AAACC. I have helped with the maintenance department, helping set up and take down art exhibits. I have helped in the programming department working on planning the coat drive, that is now a toy drive. I have helped with the accounting and finance department, working on some of the book keeping, and financial recording. I also helped do some public relations and advertising when I promoted the Halloween movie, and dance event that was hosted. Basically, with my time here at the AAACC, I haven’t had a lot of time that I have just focused on doing one thing. Because the AAACC was going through a transition period where a new director was being transitioned into his new job, I was really used wherever I was needed. To some this may seem like a bad thing because I didn’t really perfect or focus on improving a single part of my business abilities. However, I feel as though this experience for me because it helped me become more well-rounded, and it also helped me gain a lot of new skills that I may not get otherwise.

I feel like I helped out here using not only my business skills, but my overall skills that I have gained throughout my life. Like I said before, I was really helping out with many different departments here at the AAACC. Some of the times I didn’t even use my business skills, because what was needed were like communication skills or sometimes just hard work and some manual labor. I think that me being here was good because they needed help with a lot of different areas, and me being here allowed them to focus on the really important stuff, and put me wherever help was needed.

Overall, I really enjoyed my time here at the AAACC, and I am glad that I could help them out in whatever way possible. For anyone else looking to intern here, it is a great opportunity to expand your mind, and learn about different types of business culture. I look forward to having the opportunity to come back and help out here at the AAACC in the future if possible.