This summer, I interned for Festival Accès Asie, a Montréal-based arts festival that promotes Asian cultures and stories. I was drawn to this internship as Festival Accès Asie’s mission statement aligned with my own: this festival exists to advance intercultural exchange, promote cultural understanding, and foster dialogue in intercultural solidarity. I strongly believe that changes in policy need to begin from the ground up, and the first step in achieving these changes is learning and understanding different cultures. Furthermore, as I grew up all my life pursuing the arts—music, dance, visual art, film—I thought it would be great to experience working firsthand in the arts and culture sector, especially in a city as international as Montréal.
My internship spanned over a period of two months, with the festival running throughout May and the debriefing period taking place in June. The festival events included and opening cocktail night (which welcomed over six hundred attendees!), a piano performance, a theatrical reading, a roundtable, a film festival and competition, and a series of culinary workshops. At the festival events, I greeted attendees bilingually, managed the merchandise and ticketing table, and set up the event venues. Outside of the events, I developed many promotional media materials for the festival, including a slideshow for the opening night and certificates for the winners of the film festival. I was also the photographer and videographer at both screenings of the film festival event!
May was a bustling month and passed by in a flash. June followed, and we were back to working full-time in the festival office. In this month, I translated many documents from French to English, wrote letters of appreciation, and conducted data entry to track the press releases related to the festival and merchandise inventory. We also conducted a reflective post-mortem, where all members of the Festival Accès Asie team shared their thoughts on each event of the festival.
One continuous challenge (which became less challenging over time!) was adapting to the French workplace: although I took French courses throughout high school and even in university, my French was only at about an intermediate level when I began this internship. However, as all members of the Festival Accès Asie were Francophone, I had to learn and adapt to working in a French sphere. Also, most of our events welcomed a primarily Francophone audience, and it was a great opportunity for me to work with the community in my third language. After these couple months of working in French with Festival Accès Asie, I can confidently say that my French has improved! This internship was a great opportunity to use my French language skills in an array of different settings.
Even though my experience with Festival Accès Asie did not involve work within the sector of politics, it broadened my understanding of how the preservation and sharing of different arts and cultures is integral to fostering a dialogue and understanding at the citizens’ level.
