Arts and Culture Program Coordinator + Film Festival Programmer
Sarah is an Arts and Culture Program Coordinator/Film Festival Programmer at a cultural organisation with a library, gallery, language classes and workshops and is the driving force behind a nation-wide film festival.
“It’s not about making anything, it’s about coordinating projects and people, piecing them together and keeping everything under control so that it’s all moving forward and delivered on time.”
What an Arts and Culture Program Coordinator/Film Festival Programmer does
My role consists of programming and facilitating the logistics behind arts and cultural events and activities including an Australia-wide film festival. I program and manage events and workshops that parallel with exhibitions which means that I draw concepts from and create complementary activities in correlation to exhibitions for audiences to attend.
Once a curator curates an exhibition, I gather concepts. I then find relevant films or activities through which audiences can experience those themes. For example, I’ll be holding a painting workshop for kids where they’ll learn how to paint a mural on porcelain tiles inspired by the exhibition and learn about the history of mural tile paintings.
In a nutshell, I come up with potential ideas and find the right people to run the activities or workshops. It’s essentially a project management role which involves, but isn’t limited to, facilitation and budget management. As I’m working with different organisations while representing my own, I have to streamline messaging to the public and ensure it’s within the company’s brand, so that’s where writing concepts for all the exhibitions come in. I also plan and execute marketing and design tasks. It’s not about making anything, it’s about coordinating projects and people, piecing them together and keeping everything under control so that it’s all moving forward and delivered on time.
For the Film Festival Programmer role, I do the same as everything within my Arts and Culture Program Coordinator role plus curate the films that are showcased at the festival. I watch a bunch of films released within the past year and choose a select few that explore cultural and social issues in a way where audiences can learn and expand their knowledge from. There’s more creative power and control. I also look after the relationships between film distributors and look after stakeholders like our outsourced graphic designer, sponsors, bookings, catering and liaise with venues of the festival Australia-wide.
The unexpected parts of the job
I do a lot of hosting. When we have guests, mostly artists and filmmakers, I take them around. I also do a lot of MC-ing, presenting and public speeches. The coordinator role is such a mixed bag. I do the conceptual side of things like the public programming because we don’t have a public programming team. I do the marketing because we don’t have a marketing team. I do sponsorships because we don’t have a sponsorships team. I work on a skeleton team and our budgets aren’t huge so we have to utilise our resources really well which means everyone does 100 different things.
What you think a job is going to be, isn’t necessarily how it’ll play out
A friend of mine recommended the job to me and I applied. I thought it was going to be an arts admin job but when I started I realised I actually enjoy supporting other artists. I like that there’s less pressure because if it were my own exhibition, I’d get too precious about it. After exhibiting my own work in the past, I feel it gets really emotional because often when you’re curating a concept and pieces you’ve been thinking about for a really long time, there’s a personal tie so it’s hard to separate the fact that you’re giving this to the public. When you’re working for an organisation, you’re represented by them. Ask yourself whether you want to be recognised as an individual or be recognised as an organisation. People who want their name on things often have a hard time working for an organisation because they just want their name on it and they’ll be selective about the projects they work on based on the alignment of their own interests. If you choose to work for an organisation you will have to be executing projects regardless of the level of interest or passion you have for them.
Career paths can shift
I studied a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in Photomedia. Prior to my current role, I taught English in Japan, did artist residencies and held marketing, photography and design roles for various organisations. I just hustled and ended up getting a photography job and then thought this organisation needs design work, I can learn how to do that, or someone wants to film their workshop, I know how to do that! Even if I wasn’t amazing at it, I’d still say that I was great at it and I’d do it. I got my current job because they were looking for someone who had marketing experience and an arts background. As I had previously done marketing, ran exhibitions, managed clients, even though it wasn’t in my title, everything has helped and continues to. All the knowledge has transferred over.
How it’s all contributing to something she wished she had
I like that I get to make art accessible to the public. I think a lot of it is due to the fact that I grew up not knowing or learning about art, not ever going to art exhibitions or films and engaging in culture because my parents didn’t engage in culture, they were just busy working. When I was in university and even now, it’s hard for my family to understand what I do which has made me also want to make art and culture accessible to people like my parents or friends who just don’t engage in culture because they hadn’t been exposed to it.
An issue I have with arts institutions is that they only expose art to a certain demographic and it’s a challenge to reach and engage with other audiences who are just unaware of it and don’t know how to participate. There are particular organisations that have great exhibitions and public programs but they don’t engage with their immediate community who may not haven’t been brought up that way. That’s what I like about the organsation I work for—it’s more than just fine art, we explore language, pop culture, traditional culture which makes it much more accessible for people.
Someone who would thrive as a Program Coordinator
Anyone who likes to run multiple projects against tight deadlines and thrives in fast-paced environments. I would say the most important thing is that you’re passionate enough to overlook the dirty work because when you look at the day-to-day tasks, it’s boring, it’s not interesting. The overall project is what matters.
“Get a skill for yourself first and then run for your passions...I’m not saying that you need heaps of money but you have to be self-sustainable. I don’t want to be someone who is chasing a dream and not building skills along the way that can assist me so that I can afford a practical life too.”
Advice to her younger self
Get a skill for yourself first and then run for your passions. Choose a practical skill that is so tangible that you could go anywhere in the world and always find a job for money to fall back on. I would say that I was quite lucky that I built my skills but I’m not good at any of them, I’m just good at bluffing them.
Unfortunately, we live in a society where we need money to do a lot of things and I’m not saying that you need heaps of money but you have to be self-sustainable. I don’t want to be someone who is chasing a dream and not building skills along the way that can assist me so that I can afford a practical life too.
Your job title isn’t your identity
What you study is not your identity and in your lifetime, you can have multiple careers so don’t be so focused on choosing the right career from the get-go because once you start something, the best thing to do is see it through to the end and then move on. Don’t start something and get cold feet or feel like it’s not for you before you’ve even tried it because there’s such a fine line between quitting too soon and quitting at the right time. There’s nothing wrong with quitting as long as you’ve put all your effort in and you can walk away and tell yourself okay, I can close that chapter of my life and I can move onto something else.
Also, don’t be scared of changing careers because it’s a part of life. I think there’s this sentiment of careers being definitive identities like when people ask, “What do you do?” I don’t think life is black and white. You can be an interesting person and have the worst job in the world but you could have also had five amazing jobs before that and just decided that you wanted that particular job because in that stage of your life, it wasn’t what was important to you, you just had other priorities at the time.
Future plans
I’d still like to work in public programming. I’d love to work more on festivals because I think community engagement and making art accessible is important. It’s important to me because my mum didn’t have the money and people to give her culture and as there’s a language barrier as well, she doesn’t know how to access the things that I can so every time there’s a Vietnamese film or play that’s coming to Australia, I get her tickets because I want her to enjoy the activities that I can enjoy. I’m lucky that I can understand the language and have the education and have been in an environment to access them so I’d like to be able to make those cultural activities to people like my mum and not my mum in terms of her demographic, but just people who aren’t involved because it’s not in their personal sphere or radar.
If you’re interested in the arts and cultural sector: