About Us

What We Do

The Arts Amplifier is designed to help UBC Arts graduate students and postdoctoral fellows gain professional experience and skills tailored to their skills and interests. We do this in a few different ways:

  1. We work with community organizations and workplaces to create opportunities for Arts graduate students to put their skills and expertise to use
  2. We provide programming to support Arts graduate students in exploring professional pathways
  3. We work with Arts graduate students to turn their ideas and projects into meaningful work experience

At the Arts Amplifier, we know that Arts graduate students have a lot to offer in a many professional contexts. We also know that community organizations and other employers have needs that grad students and postdocs can fulfill – needs for research support, data collection and analysis, communications, instructional design, human insight, and on and on. Our goal is to facilitate connections between graduate students and professional opportunities, whether in the form of paid internships or workshops exploring career goals.

We believe a graduate education in the Arts prepares students to contribute broadly to the public good. If you’re an Arts graduate student, we want to help you figure out what that looks like for you.

How we got started

The Arts Amplifier was founded as a pilot project in 2020 by Dr. Letitia Henville with support from a grant from the BC Ministry of Advanced Education. The goal of the pilot was to help Arts graduate students leverage their academic skills and interests to support their professional development. The small but mighty team that launched the Arts Amplifier designed this program specifically for Humanities and Social Sciences grad students and focused on creating lower-barrier, inclusive programming as much as possible.

The Arts Amplifier has since become a fixture in the Faculty of Arts and we remain focused on supporting graduate students in gaining experience and skills that can support meaningful professional development.

Read more about some of our past work.

So, what can we do for you?

  • If you are a graduate student and postdoctoral fellow, in the Faculty of Arts, check out our Skills Building events and see what Paid Experiences might interest you.
  • If you are a faculty member or graduate administrator, we can facilitate professional development sessions or workshops for your grad students. We can also help you hire a graduate student intern to support your research project
  • If you are a community partner, we can connect you with a talented group of students with diverse skill sets and ambitions who can help meet your organizations needs

Read more from past students and partners on how Arts Amplifier programs have impacted them here.

Get in touch!

Sign up for our newsletter here or reach out directly for support on getting started on your next project today.