Schools

Creative Washburn Students Mix With The Pros

The program gives kids a shot at joining the advertising industry.

Friday morning was a workday in Nancy Hinz's third-floor art classroom at . Students hunched over or slouched in front of tables piled with materials for their projects. These students pawed through stacks of glossy magazines, searching for text and images to clip out and paste into collages that represent their "personal brand."

It was a scene not too different from your average art class—except that interspersed among the 14 students are five veterans of well-known firms in the Minneapolis advertising and marketing industry.

In between snips of scissors, you can hear five different conversations going on about everything from color theory to workplace life at an ad agency. It's one of those rare classrooms where more learning seems to be happening in the side conversations than in the work each student is doing.

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Hinz's students are some of the 400 around the Twin Cities in classes set up by Brand Lab, a nonprofit founded in 2007 by the head of the famous OLSON advertising agency. Each class, said Executive Director Ellen Walthour, is built around opening typically under-privileged students' eyes to a industry, and helping them create a career path in an industry desperately seeking diverse tallent.

"You can't apply for a job if you don't know it exists," Walthour said. "We're not just a cool field trip and we're not just a cool in-class experiment. We try to connect the dots for students."

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There are a lot of dots—from a student's junior or senior year of high school to an entry-level job in the marketing and advertising industry. Throughout the semester-long class, students learn the basics of marketing and advertising and take a field trip to an ad agency's offices. At the end of the year, students are invited to apply for a slate of paid summer internships in local agencies. Walthour said the group even pairs these students with mentors to help them stay on their desired career track, and helps them network with potential employers as they move through college.

Back in Hinz's classroom at Washburn, it's clear that the hands-on exposure and semi-vocational learning is rubbing off on many students. 

Kyle Alexander, one of Hinz's students, said he had always been creative, and he sketches on the side. But before the class, he hadn't thought of being able turn his talents into a career. 

"Yeah, I could see myself donig this three years later," he said. "I don't want to still be using gluesticks still, though."


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