Church of Emmanuel, Foxboro, MA
This summer, I worked for the Creative Arts Team at Church of Emmanuel, serving the Boston to Providence corridor. Five minutes from Gillette Stadium, our church is the home of LYNN (Love Your Neighbor Now) Ministries with an industrial grade kitchen able to feed a large homeless population in Brockton and Attleboro. For the church, a visual appearance is necessary to complement our vibrant reality, and I had the opportunity to provide them with that appearance for their summer semester.
One big project I worked on was redesigning the stage. As a huge fan of string, I proposed an economical set up of using string and nails to create designs on the wall. I made sure that the clean lines of my design would direct the congregation’s attention to the main screen and unify the band players at the same time; and we added LED lights to project whatever color we wished onto the string. On Sunday, I heard many theories about what it was: Is it wood? Is it LED tape? Is it paint? It is string!
I was also made daily Vacation Bible School handouts, back-of-the-seat flyers, announcement cards, tithe cards, various logos, and information graphics. And I learned how to be a barista in their café! One Sunday I was asked to play piano and the next Sunday to manage the slides. Other weeks I would edit their website and help upkeep their sermon web player. One highlight of the summer was when my pastor took me to the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, where his professor taught on the book of James in Greek, which appealed to me as a potential Classics major. In the busiest week, during Vacation Bible School, I was the main actress and performed in front of 90 kids daily up on stage and in costume. To say the least, I was never bored at Church of Emmanuel!
While my work at Emmanuel was fun and rather eccentric, I have come away from it with many practical skills. I have learned InDesign, Photoshop, small bits of carpentry, coffee-making, web editing, and ProPresenter. I truly loved the versatile nature of my job and the many creative outlets I had available to me. At Williams, I am drawn to computer science, but in this internship, I realized that I love playing with user experience, and that I have a drive for artful excellence and beautiful efficiency. Aside from assisting all three of my potential majors (computer science, art, and Classics), this internship equipped me with tools to help fulfill my position as secretary and treasurer of the Williams Christian Fellowship (WCF). I have already used my new InDesign skills for flyers and my creative skills for WCF and the Chaplain’s Office logo. I am so thankful to Emmanuel for offering me this internship. Even more, I am grateful to the Kraft Family for their generosity and to the ’68 Center for Career Exploration for giving me this opportunity to grow.