By Cora Secore

When I was working my way through high school, I did not have a real career plan nor any ambition to find one. I didn’t know what job I could see myself fulfilling, let alone how to get myself one. I only knew my own creative interests. When I was a senior in high school by 2019, I mostly expected to find my way by chance, whether that be on my own or through community college. But during that same year, my grandma miraculously found and recommended to me an organization called the Pop-Up Gallery Group (PUGG), back when it was stationed in a room at the YMCA. Today, PUGG has evolved into MKAD’s Youth Workforce. It was a program under DRAW (the Department of Regional Art Workers) for high school students to learn and become hands-on with what it was like to work in the arts.

The Youth Workforce came to me at a time when I really needed it, and I didn’t realize it then. It was like a very special club that became my proactive connection to the arts scene in Kingston, a scene that I had not known personally. I knew a couple people there already, prior friends to ease me in, and through them I made several new friends. Together, we spent the summer exploring all manner of galleries across Kingston, each one a new discovery to me. I worked with different artists in preparing their exhibitions, and I worked with different institutions in manning the workforce’s own contributions to art-themed events.

It was easy to gain a sense of aimlessness in high school without any career path I had in mind. What meant a lot to me was that sense of direction and community with my peers – a place to be, the knowledge of how to make myself useful, and the way out into a world I could be passionate about.

After I graduated (at the time it was only available to high school students), I worked in a warehouse before going off to college and majoring in fine arts. After a couple of years I was left looking for work again, realizing I should be making money during the summer related to what I was learning. I reached out to Lara Giordano, the founder of the Youth Workforce and the DRAW, and asked her if she would keep an eye out for jobs in the arts that could be a good fit for me.. What she replied with surprised me, as she suggested that I rejoin PUGG! It turned out that in the time I spent away from the workforce, they had raised the age limit to 24, allowing high school students and college-aged folks opportunities to find their way into a job in the arts. This came as quite a relief to me, knowing I wanted to pursue the arts as a career but still not having a clear vision of how to break in. I was given a new gust of wind beneath my wings to see the potential laid out before me.

In 2021 I was once again a member of the Youth Workforce. With the new space that the DRAW had acquired with the Midtown Kingston Arts District in Kingston’s Energy Square, the Youth Workforce was doing a lot more. We were hosting our own exhibitions and assisting frequent classes taught by local art educators. I met a lot of new friends and artists this way, something I was never great at doing on my own. The standout new thing that the DRAW was taking on was hosting their own community events like never before. That was the first year we held the DRAW-A-THON, which was a very exciting time. I remember a lot of ideas for what we could do flying around during the preparation phase and I proposed a small coliseum where people could draw little warriors held up by stands, since I knew how much kids like action stuff. Lara gave me the okay for it immediately, with the instruction to make the coliseum myself out of paper mache. I became central to such an incredible event, not only in running it but also in building it. The DRAW-A-THON helped me understand better than ever just how much the Youth Workforce seamlessly made me a part of something in the local community.

From then on I never stopped being a part of something. We worked with O+ in making our own banners and booths for their arts festival. We worked with the traveling performance artists known as WHOOP DEE DOO, different members of the Youth Workforce helping with props and performances, some even traveling across the country with them. We worked with different artists with their ideas for art projects as well as various exhibitions. We even helped set up more of MKAD’s own large-scale events, like the Jell-O Jamboree and Eco Arts Week. If it sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. We were truly in the thick of Kingston’s art scene. I was really fulfilled by being a contributing factor to the success of these incredibly fun events. Growing up near the area, I often saw a lot of events that seemed like a good time but slipped my mind or were left unattainable due to a lack of a ride or bad timing. Working with my feet on the ground to make events happen went a long way in helping me feel like part of something larger than myself.

After a certain point, I was getting downright starstruck by the kinds of people and organizations we got to collaborate with and even provide work for. I’ve made so many connections with artists across the Hudson Valley, artists I look up to who actually know me and shared their interest in my endeavors. I’ve learned a lot about the directions I can take myself and my career through them, and they gave me hope that I can actually contribute my work to something meaningful. The arts scene in and around Kingston is so dense and supportive. Every creative person beautifully feeds into each other. It constitutes Kingston arts as this living organism, and I, a new blood cell carrying the capacity to support it from project to project.

I would be remiss to not mention the Ben Wigfall Perpetuity Project, an ongoing project that was the biggest experience that the members of the Youth Workforce have gotten to be a part of due to its length and involvement in more facets than any single project thus far. Ben Wigfall was the first black professor to work at SUNY New Paltz and a prolific printmaker who ran Communications Village: a print shop open to its community that hosted its own workshops and classes. Communications Village inspires MKAD tremendously, especially in the way we operate the Neighborhood Print Studio. The height of the workforce’s involvement with the project lasted for well over a year, as we traveled across New York to different print shops and galleries to see the works of Ben Wigfall and hear the testimonials of those who knew him. The adventures culminated in our own exhibition showing our artwork that was inspired by Ben Wigfall and what he believed in. My project was a box covered by drawings of various characters, filled with pins featuring art of people I knew. I had a station set up with a button maker, the intention being for people to take a pin and leave a pin that they’ve created, working as a self-cycling pin community.

During my time as a Youth Workforce member, we had someone who had begun writing blog posts for the then-PUGG website. I was set up to take up the blog after him due to my natural inclination towards writing. I started writing short articles for the PUGG blog, getting a lot of experience with professional writing and editing. Lara set up meetings for me with experienced editor and journalist Lynn Woods, who would edit my blog posts and explain her thought process in order to prepare me for editing my own work. It was a tremendous step towards improving my writing ability.

Once I got more involved with writing for the PUGG website, I was set up with more ambitious assignments. I was being sent to events to take pictures and collect information to write about. I even scheduled interviews like a true journalist. It was around this time that I started being mentored by Maxine Leu, who was the most influential person to my work today. With infinite patience and wisdom, she taught me various skills like the way around camera settings, how to edit a website through Squarespace, how to navigate printer settings, and how to maintain a disciplined work ethic. Her teachings have been invaluable in my pursuits, and thanks to her I feel like a true asset.

A few summers ago, the Youth Workforce was working with O+ to create audio tours to accompany some of the many murals across Kingston, written and read aloud by the members of the workforce and accessible via QR codes displayed beside the murals. Mine can be found by Robin X, a mural just across the lot from the Neighborhood Print Studio. Around the time this was happening, I was doing more for MKAD and clocking in hours that the other workforce members weren’t. So Lisa Kelley, the Executive Director of MKAD, offered me an employee position in MKAD. I took her offer and officially became the Communications Assistant at MKAD, no longer a Youth Workforce member. I had always imagined that it would be the perfect place to work too, having a long relationship with the company and being creatively minded.

So far it has been an incredible experience. It’s been rewarding to contribute to MKAD so directly, to write for them and document events that would be immortalized in how we represent ourselves. I’ve always found MKAD’s philosophy of accessibility to be valiant, a philosophy that also specifically helped me out when I was growing into my own person after high school and figuring out what to do with myself. Who wouldn’t want to contribute to the ability to bring such opportunities to other people? Not only that, but I’ve come so far as a writer. I’ve been busy writing many more articles and press releases for MKAD, even getting chances to have my work published in the Kingston Wire and Midtown Lively. Through MKAD, I also found my way to working with O+.

While working at MKAD, I often don’t feel like I’m working “under” someone. Teamwork keeps this organization running and it’s indicative of the community in the workplace that I can be leaned on for what I know and vice versa. It feels intuitive to work here. I’ve become eager to help mainly due to how virtuous of a goal we have. It feels like a workplace full of people helping each other. I’m looking forward to many more years working here, and finding all of the new opportunities to grow and branch out that it provides.

The path from the Youth Workforce to MKAD was a long one full of adventure and paved by creatively-minded people. My writing evolved from a hobby to a sustainable source of income. Not only that, but I can make money off of my own photography and the exciting process of conducting interviews. My career actually has direction now. I’ve built up a beautiful resume through my time at MKAD. It was not merely life-changing, but rather life-defining. It’s a gift to this town and to me as an outlet to channel my interests into success and prosperity.