Neil Stringer ’27 volunteered to usher at the Lindemann Performing Arts Center’s inaugural performance last October. He soon learned that, through ArtsCrew, he could have been paid for the job.
ArtsCrew is a workforce development program run by the Brown Arts Institute with a twofold mission: supporting local artists by hiring and training them and helping the institute operate its venues and run events, according to Jamil Jorge, ArtsCrew’s manager.
Both community members and students at Brown and other local schools make up the nearly 80-strong workforce. When it was launched last year, ArtsCrew hired about 100 members, with a roughly equal number of students and non-students, Jorge said.
“I kind of think about (Brown Arts Institute) as a teaching arts institute in the way that you might think of a teaching hospital,” Jorge added, citing the wide range of roles ArtsCrew members may fill based on their interests — from working as preparators to ticketing with visitor services in the box office.
Since Stringer intended to continue volunteering at campus performances, joining ArtsCrew’s visitor services and producing teams was “the obvious way to make money and also keep doing what I’d like to do,” he said.
Job openings for community members at ArtsCrew are temporarily closed because the position garnered nearly 100 applications, Jorge said.
Various other arts-related roles on campus, such as public art tour guides and the gallery assistants at The Bell, have now been integrated into the ArtsCrew workforce, said Avery Willis Hoffman, professor of the practice of arts and classics and artistic director of the Brown Arts Institute.
The program allows staffers to work in roles outside their primary assignment during periods of high demand to “build in flexibility,” Hoffman explained. For example, if ArtsCrew cannot fill shifts for ticketing, then those shifts are opened up to staff outside of visitor services roles.
During the pandemic, when 95% of artists and creatives lost their creative income, Hoffman visited the Lindemann Performing Arts Center construction site and was inspired to initiate ArtsCrew. After seeing the complex structure of the Lindemann, she realized she needed a sizable workforce to “activate the space,” she said.
In spring 2023, alongside other Brown Arts Institute staff, Hoffman taught the first ARTS 1800: ArtsCorp and The Future of Arts Work” course, which encouraged students to consider what a program like ArtsCrew would mean for the campus.
The program was renamed “ArtsCrew” during the spring 2024 semester, after trademark issues made “ArtsCorp” difficult to register as a name for the program that could be licensed to other universities.
This fall, Jorge is teaching ARTS 1800: “ArtsCrew & The Future of Arts Work.” He explained that the course will utilize interviews, fieldwork and community discussion to examine what kinds of training ArtsCrew can implement to help members expand their skills.
Sam Ho ’27 started working with ArtsCrew in January in the visitor services and exhibition departments, and later as a public art tours guide. ArtsCrew is “very centered on helping people gain experience in the arts,” she said, noting that working with ArtsCrew helped her find a summer internship at the Gagosian Gallery.
The job provides “an inside look into a lot of the arts events at Brown,” Ho added, noting that she staffed events such as “Il Cinema Ritrovato on Tour” and the Gendo Taiko concert “In Return,” which she otherwise would not have known about.
Once her visitor services duties are over, “I get to also experience whatever the event is,” Ho explained. “It's just kind of a cool way to explore what's going on at Brown in terms of arts and theater and performance.”
Kate Rowberry is a senior staff writer at The Herald.
