College Level Internships

CURRENTS NEW MEDIA

College Level Internship Program

We are not accepting college level Intern applications for 2026 unless you are able to obtain travel, lodging, per diem and wage support from your University, other organization or personally. We are happy to support you in this process. It may be possible for us to find housing for you in Santa Fe. We will consider a small stipend on a case by case basis.

CURRENTS is truly a community effort consisting of our dedicated staff, our fantastic interns, our installation crew, our network of volunteers, our partner venues that host events during the festival and all of the artists from near and far who exhibit in the festival.

What we offer:

• A wonderful community of artists, staff and interns from around the world
• First-hand art handling experience, experience working with artists, technical knowledge and training
• Experience event and performance production from beginning to end 
• College credit when prearranged with university and student
• Letter of recommendation from us (if requested)
• Lunch every day of of installation and de-installation of the festival

What we expect from our interns:

• Stay in Santa Fe for the entire month of June. Any proposed exceptions to this must be discussed beforehand.
• Experience or strong interest in some or any of the following: media art, A/V tech, programming, exhibition installation, volunteer coordinating, graphic design, light design, event planning, curation etc.
• A willingness to share your individual talents while working as a team member. In the past, our interns have come from a variety of disciplines– we’ve had musicians, actors, tech-heads, performance artists, visual artists, folks interested in event coordination, festivals, construction and set design, lighting design and more
• Hard work! Producing a festival of this size is a LOT of work. We expect our interns to be ready to dig in on those long days of installation (sometimes up to 12 hours).
• Desire to learn new things, meet new people, dedicate yourself and work as a team!
• You can expect 2 days off each week for 4 weeks

A timeline of our internship program:

Install
We have a lot to do this first week and we hit the ground running. Building walls, hanging cables and projectors, organizing all the necessary equipment, painting, and carefully unpacking and installing artwork.  During this time, artists who have installations will be there too, and interns are paired with artists to help them install their work.  Interns will also be familiarizing themselves with installations that they will be running and docenting during the duration of the festival. CURRENTS also features several “pop-up” performances during our opening weekend, and there will be rehearsals for those as needed. Interns are welcome to participate in performances if they want to!

Opening Weekend
Opening weekend is usually the busiest time of the festival! During this time, interns help with performances, with docenting and running installations and learn how to open and close the festival. There is an artist/staff/VIP party on Sunday night of opening weekend.

Festival is open
Interns help with maintenance of the festival, and may be responsible for and learn how to help with technical troubleshooting if anything in the festival goes down. Our interns are docents during this time and run installations, greet visitors, help with any questions visitors may have and are responsible for opening and closing the exhibition space everyday we are open. 

De-Install
Interns help our crew and staff to take down, package and ship off the art that came from out of state or country and return the exhibition space to its original state. CURRENTS hosts a wrap party during this time.