2018 Arts Ambassador Molly Adams reflects on interacting with the arts in a university environment and her goal of encouraging interdisciplinary creative collaboration over the following academic year.
When reflecting on how I became involved with Arts at the University of Southampton, it’s important to realise that being paid for working in the arts sector was not an opportunity I expected to have as a student. Before this internship, the arts were something I felt passionate about with very little hope of making a career for myself.
Intellectually, I don’t see the point in settling in one discipline, but increasingly students are encouraged to prioritise employability, something that felt counterproductive to my actual interests. As an English and History student, interdisciplinary work is a crucial part of my everyday life. Interacting with different people with different mind-sets is one of the greatest opportunities we have as university students and even better, it’s a brilliant way to get involved with the arts.
From my academic work within multiple humanities disciplines to my personal work on comics and graphic novels, I deeply value the role of different skill sets and approaches in the arts. This year, my goal is to show students that choosing a non-arts degree is not closing a door to the arts, especially at the University of Southampton, and to work on encouraging creative collaboration between students of all disciplines.
Arts Ambassadors is a paid opportunity, supported by the Careers and Employability Service’s Excel Southampton Internship programme, University of Southampton.
