Eighteen-year-old Trevor Slowinski recently participated in Hudson Hall’s weeklong Live Arts and Media Training Program. Designed to build skills and knowledge for careers in Hudson’s cultural, hospitality and retail sectors, the project was funded in part by BTCF’s Fund for Columbia County, as part of our investments in school-to-work programming. Trevor hopes to enroll at SUNY New Paltz.
I do creative writing, art and music primarily. I started making stuff back in middle school. I would watch shows, play video games and read books, but I wouldn’t be satisfied just listening or hearing or reading. I had stories and songs in my head
that wanted to get out. Eventually I found more fulfillment in creating media than consuming it.
During the workshop, I learned a lot more about how performances are organized and especially about networking with people in the creative industry. I’ve always been someone who operated more on his own. But I think that having people to talk to when things get rough, and things like technology to keep me organized—that’s going to be really beneficial.
Programs like these are very important because a lot of people, especially in lower-income communities, may not ever have access to them. In a lot of families, these things are not generally seen as a reliable means of making a living.
In schools, there needs to be a lot more acknowledgement of creative types, especially in areas like Hudson, where there’s a relatively small, underfunded art department, but still some creative people who don’t really have much of a voice. There should definitely be an expansion of programs and workshops, where you can look for creative people interested in the arts and give them an opportunity to share their voice and get more involved in different fields.
For me personally, it’s honestly going to take a lot of grit, a lot of classwork and independent work. I thought this out a while ago. In the future, I’m going to become a professor of writing. That way I can still write and I can have a job where I talk about writing and help people write. I definitely think that’s my path.
