WHAT IS MIP?
Founded in 1996, the Meridian Interns Program (MIP) is a paid internship for low-income teens from all over San Francisco in which Artist Instructors integrate art-making workshops with training in job-related skills. The Society for Art Publications of the Americas applies for support to sustain its Meridian Interns Program which uses a designated studio in its non-profit Meridian Gallery as a base for experiential work in the arts. Youth are taught by a team of five or six artists. Conceived as a natural offshoot of the programming of Meridian Gallery, MIP transforms the knowledge and energy of the people and resources associated with Meridian Gallery into a unique educational experience, providing approximately 34 youth each year the chance to work with and learn from professional interdisciplinary artists.
Meridian Interns with Instructors, Spring 2006
  
The Meridian Interns Program provides these youth, aged 14 to 18, for nine months, in the school year and summer, with real work in the real world, a paid training in all the transferable job skills of running a gallery (literacy, verbal and visual communication, computer graphic programs, publication writing, illustration design and production; gallery maintenance and installation of monthly shows). The context for this curriculum driven program is a working downtown gallery. Meridian partners with the Mayor's Youth Employment and Education Program (MYEEP), who pays the youth a minimum hourly wage as they create their own diverse working community in a safe environment while they learn art making skills from a team of five to six professional artist instructors. They organize several annual events including their own gallery show, a Holiday Coffee House performance, and publish a Zine for about 600 city youth.
CURRICULUM
Annual breadbaking field trip to the Marin Headlands

Gallery Management activities include: installation - gallery preparation and actual hanging of artwork; curating - selecting images for exhibitions; communication - writing and talking about art, and greeting visitors; office skills - answering the phone, filing, computer work; and preparing for openings.

All interns are given a sketchbook at the beginning of the program and encouraged to keep track of their experiences through drawing and writing.

Artmaking activities include: illustration--drawing, painting and other media, graphic design, layout design, writing--poetry, essay, prose, printmaking, collage, photography, video art, documentary filmmaking, animation, sound art and music, public murals, architecture, sculpture and more. All activities serve to increase visual and verbal literacy and communication, and awareness of themselves and their environment.

Summers in the Presidio

For the past five summers, Interns have been spending one day a week doing habitat restoration with park naturalists in the Presidio National Park. In the Summer of 2006, they created a mural, "Regeneration," depicting native plants and animals that were nearing extinction but have since returned due to habitat restoration efforts. They also produced a video about the making of the mural.

Drawing by Intern Brian Lei

STAFF 

Art Interns receive nine months of artmaking and gallery management training led by instructors: Trish Callo, Devin Cecil-Wishing, Andy Gouveia, and Dennis Somera, and gallerists Anne Brodzky, Tony Williams and Adria Otte.
 
Interns with their Regeneration mural in the Presidio, Summer 2006
  
Meridian Artist Instructor Brenda Hutchinson works with Intern Sabrina Lawrence on radio project. Also pictured: Tony Williams
 
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