Introducing The Wayfinding Fellowship: an inaugural program to support discovery and professional development in the arts.

This year-long Fellowship at The Luminary utilizes structures of discovery, experiential learning, and creative visioning through systems thinking and empathetic design in order to apply creative research into professional practice. Over the course of a year, the Fellow will be guided through a set of research and design projects and focus-group discussions with the Director around predetermined and proposed organizational goals. The program is designed to support experiential learning, with emphasis on direct experience and focused reflection, and the outcome of sustaining a pipeline for future roles in arts administration.

The fellowship is built around a conceptual model of Wayfinding: a long used method of travelers over land and sea to orient themselves, or provide further guidance within, unmarked or often mislabeled environments. This definition is expanded in artist Chloë Bass’s project, Wayfinding first exhibited at the Studio Museum in Harlem, later at The Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis, and currently at the Cultural Center in Los Angeles. Following a process of orientation, route decision, monitoring, and destination recognition, the fellowship honors the charting of one’s route as a practice rooted in process, adaptation, and presence. 

This year, we introduce the program with Brianna McIntyre and her focus on Institutional Architecture: the formation of social, structural, and physical forms of space surrounding a shared mission. Working closely with the organization’s Artistic & Executive Director, Kalaija Mallery, Brianna will assist the organization as it invests in its physical space and internal infrastructure, to better pillar and platform its mission.