Brit Ellis, Sm[ART] Commons Blog Editor

The Sm[ART] Commons blog is an online platform where students, faculty and alumni from the Fine and Performing Arts at MCLA can share and explore their unique experiences with arts and culture in the Berkshires. The blog is run by students and is offered as an internship for FPA majors. The blog features artwork, travel stories, video clips, blog posts, internship opportunities, collaborative projects, features and interviews.

My experience as the editor of the Sm[ART] Commons blog has been especially unique. I have learned how to navigate website platforms and the ability to adapt, and change focus on important matters. During the start of my internship, my primary focus was obtaining content from various people. The blog at the time, had not been up to date and needed a facelift. I was in charge of communicating with faculty and students to acquire art submissions for the blog. This became increasingly difficult due to the COVID-19 virus that has plagued most of the world. Travel trips were cancelled (The MCLA Germany trip was intended to be featured), art exhibits were delayed, then cancelled (MCLA’s Advanced Museum Studies class was supposed to curate with an artist and display an art exhibit at Galley 51). All of the work I had intended to create was suddenly crumbling. As fate would see it, there was a light at the end of the tunnel. My supervisor, Lisa Donovan had arranged a meeting for her and I to meet with Shannon Cahill, a former Sm[ART] Commons blog editor. She had extremely valuable insights to offer for the blog, including the shift in my focus of work. Previously, the blog had been on WordPress, a difficult to navigate, website design platform. Cahill suggested that we move the blog to a more user-friendly platform such as Wix. Currently, I am in the process of designing the blog on this new platform, transferring all of the old content and giving the blog a 2020 makeover.