At Animas High School, juniors have the opportunity to go into the community and do an internship with a business. This can be in Durango, but it doesn't have to be, Students can go out of town, out of the state, or even out of the country. LINK stands for Leading Internships for new knowledge.
iAM Music
iAM Music is a local music institute. There is private and group coaching, mentorship, community outreach and more. At iAM Music, unique performance opportunities are provided along with artist workshops, collaboration, and artistic empowerment.
At iAM MUSIC, I wrote 4 songs and planned a show called Arcadian Dreams. To plan this, I contacted the venue (iAM MUSIC), made an Eventbrite to sell tickets, I put it on Facebook, and I contacted Aedan Hall who is another musician in Durango. I also made a poster for my show! At the show, we each performed a solo set and we performed a set together. This was my LINK Project.
Reflecting on My LINK Internship
Before I went into my LINK Internship, I knew my mentor because she was my vocal coach for a few years. She knew my musical ability, so it was nice to be able to get right to work. I knew how to write songs, but I was always self conscious about my music. During my internship, I learned what it is like to be an independent rising musician. I didn't have to look for a venue, because iAM MUSIC has a space for shows called "The Indigo Room". I learned about what to put on a poster for an independent show. I also learned about time management - because being a musician is an independent career, the internship was too. I was supposed to have my posters done by the first week of LINK, but I kept getting distracted when writing songs, so they weren't printed until the end of week 3. I hung them up, but not a lot of people saw them. I should've made them in the first week and hung them earlier. iAM MUSIC should allow internships for AHS juniors in the future to help students grow their musical abilities. I want to go to music school, so this internship helped me prepare for what booking your own gig and writing songs looks like. I will be recording the four songs that I wrote for this internship and releasing them on Spotify.