Downtown Salisbury Arts and Entertainment District Internship

(Spring 2019)

Marissa Lopez

CMAT 495 Internship in Communications

Dr. Burns

Salisbury University

May 10, 2019

 People that are not locals to Salisbury, Maryland think of it as a boring town. They stick

to the highways and never take the backroads. When people visit the Downtown Salisbury area,

they find a small treasure in the middle of a small city. The Downtown Salisbury Visitor’s Center

and Arts and Entertainment District push to grow and expand the reach of what is happening in

Downtown. They are planning family friendly events, so parents and visitors have something to

do on the weekends instead of staying home and watching television. When creating these

community events there is a lot of planning, community engagement, and advertising involved.

The Downtown Salisbury Arts and Entertainment District is the local non-profit that has taken on

the endeavor to create events that strive for community involvement from 3rd Friday to the

Salisbury Festival. The goal of each event is to have it free to the community and for the

attendees to return for the next event. The goal for this paper is to provide an overview of my

time with The Downtown Salisbury Arts and Entertainment District that will include why

networking is important, the events that took place while I interned there, and how the office was

set up and ran.

Since the first day of college the professors, upper level college students, and other

colleagues have always said that networking is the key to success. I took this information and

kept it in the back of my mind as a reminder to always talk to people and get them to know me. I

never realized how important that piece of information would come in handy throughout my

internship. Jamie would always send me to restaurants and businesses around Downtown

Salisbury. When I walked in there I would say “Hey Jamie sent me to…” and everywhere I went

the people would say “Oh Jamie like Jamie Heater, oh okay yeah we can do that”. I was

surprised how well known this one person was around downtown. People would do whatever she

needed them to do because she has done favors for them. On the Downtown Salisbury website
there is free advertising for the local restaurants’ entertainment for the weekend. We give them

free advertisement and the restaurants and businesses would allow us to place flyers, rack cards,

and any other promotional materials in their establishments.

Another good thing that came out of Jamie’s networking in the downtown area is the

ability for her to get good turnouts to her events. For events like Pi(e) day, 3rd Friday, and the

Salisbury Marathon, Jamie would post a couple items of marketing on the Facebook page and

most of the respondents were local business owners and other people who worked with local

non-profits. I was amazed at how many events that the same people would show up for and

actually be engaged with the activities. It was refreshing to see how the local business owners,

government officials, and other workers in the downtown area would come and support our

events.

Volunteers are another good outcome from networking. When we have events in

Downtown Salisbury, we usually need a lot of volunteers because we have many stations that

need to be operated. This means that Jamie would have to go to her contacts list to figure out

what type of volunteers we were looking for and what kind we would need. Different events

require a certain type of volunteers. However for the majority of the events our volunteers were

students from Salisbury University. This was another surprise to me because Jamie is a one

person non-profit who runs off of volunteers. She has the power to hire a small staff for big

events. Jamie also has only had spring semester interns, so all the events in the fall and winter are

done by her and her small hired staff. Volunteers can also make or break your event and Jamie

seems to get lucky and the ones that participate in her events are always ready to work and catch

on to the processes quickly.

 Another observation that working with Jamie showed me is that you must know the town

and the local area that you are representing. Jamie is not from the shore which means she had to

learn her area that she services, so she can be more efficient with planning and marketing her

events. She started her career with WMDT and created her current job by herself. The

combination of attending Salisbury University and working at WMDT helped her to become

aware of her local area and what events people in the community will respond to.

I learned from working and planning a lot of events in the short time that I was interning

with the Salisbury Arts and Entertainment District that networking is not expressed enough in

college classes, yes it is mentioned, but it needs to be taught and practiced more often.

Networking is important and this needs to be shown to students what the benefits of it are. Jamie

has a small army of people behind her because of all the networking and community outreach

she is involved in. I also learned that if I want to own an event planning business in this town

that I need to start getting familiar and talking to the other small businesses owners in the

downtown area. This could benefit me in the future because I could use them as sponsors,

volunteers, and they could be my clients. However, there may have not been a future for me in

this career if one assignment didn’t change my career path.

Event planning is not a track that is offered at Salisbury University and one class does not

prepare you well enough if this is what you want to do as a career. I knew I wanted to be an

event planner in high school, but I didn’t know how to get started on that career path. When I

came to Salisbury University I still didn’t know so I was Management major. It took one

assignment to start my research on how to become an event planner. That semester I changed my

major to Communications and I got a lot of grief because “this was a useless major and you can’t

do nothing with that”. Well I am happy to say that those people who doubted my change are now
seeing how happy I am in the event planning business. I am always busy running and planning

events that I do not have time to sit down. My useless major has turned into a very exciting and

rewarding career path.

For my internship I could have not gotten placed with a better fit. The Salisbury Arts and

Entertainment District is a non-profit organization that plans free events for the community in the

Downtown Salisbury area. This means that Jamie has a small budget for producing these events.

Working for Jamie showed me how to bring the community together without breaking the

budget. 3rd Friday is a good example of how little work from her is needed, yet it is still her

event. 3rd Friday is an event where on every third Friday of each month local artists, vendors and

other community members flood the Downtown Salisbury Plaza in hopes to sell what they have

brought. Vendors will bring their own tables and supplies and set everything up by themselves.

The only thing Jamie has to do is block traffic from entering the plaza and on North Division st.,

post no alcohol beyond this point signs, and set up her activities. Everything else is left up to the

participants to take care of. The volunteers for this event monitor the Downtown Plaza and check

trash cans. They also assist any vendor that may need help and they converse with the attendees.

Volunteers are also part of the clean-up crew, but that doesn’t take long when everyone is

working together.

Another major event that Jamie is in charge of is the Salisbury Festival. An event this

large requires a bunch of communication skills. This type of event would cover the whole range

learned skills from press releases to advertising on social media. An event of this size really

reflects what the course CMAT 318 Event Planning and Communication really outlines. The

Salisbury Festival checks off almost every topic that is presented in the lectures and in the

textbooks. It was helpful to take this class at the same time that I was doing my internship
because then I could take what I was learning in class and directly apply it to what event I was

working on for my internship. This event, much like the National Folk Festival, had to have

vendor RFQ forms and many other documents that were required to participate in the event.

There was also bids that were taking place for varies things and one of them being lighting. I

always feel bad for Jamie because she is a one person operation when it comes to planning an

event for an entire county and it being free. She has to do all the work by herself and she is never

in her office no longer than five minutes before someone is emailing or calling her.

Jamie also plans and helps to promote small events that promote the Downtown Salisbury

area. An example of an event that we recently put on was Pi(e) Day. This event was something

that Jamie and I thought of together and it was interesting to see how many similar ideas we had

and how accepting she was to hear the ideas that I had come up with for the event. For this event

I got to show off some of the skills that I learned in CMAT 335 Communicating on the Web and

CMAT 342 Advertising Campaigns. I used the skills that I learned in this class to create and

design the certificate for the pizza eating competition and to help promote the events on social

media. Communicating on the Web also showed me how to promote an event by using key

words and metatags, so when people look up a word on our event post than that will be the first

thing that people will see. Advertising campaigns helped me to know what my target audience is,

how I can connect with them, and what time of day to post the event or updates, so the maximum

number of people can see it.

Other than the events that Salisbury Arts and Entertainment produced, Jamie also spends

time promoting and volunteering for other events. While I was working with Jamie, I

participated in two downtown Salisbury bar crawls. These helped to promote the downtown bars

and bring in more business for them. Also, we participated in the Salisbury Marathon. We had
the task of running the Evolution Brewing Company trailer and we had to set up the activity area

for the runners and their friends and families. Even though this wasn’t our event the visitors

center was still open as other checkpoint for event staff, volunteers, runners, and attendees.

Another event that Jamie helped with is the Special Olympics Fire Truck Pull. This event

requires fire stations from the local area to bring their strongest men and women to help and pull

a fire truck to the furthest point that they can. The proceeds from this event benefits the local

Special Olympic programs. We did not have to do much for this event except to lend them a few

items from the storage closet, help them with signage, and open the visitors center to the

attendees and participants of this event.

Jamie and her hired staff also work parts of the National Folk Festival. Caroline helps

Jamie with many things throughout the office and at her events that when it comes time for the

Folk Festival Jamie doesn’t even think twice about helping. Helping your coworkers comes full

circle because that means that Jamie can always have one person to count on to help her with her

events. She could plan the events all day long, but when it comes time to execute the plans than

she needs all the help and services she can get.

On top of planning, organizing, and running her own events and participating and

promoting other peoples’ events, Jamie is also helping Salisbury Art Space promote themselves

better. She is trying to help them back on their feet after many years of neglect from their board

members and paid staff. Salisbury Art Space is suffering from a plateau of events and activities

that would bring in more interested community members and hopefully in return will also bring

them more revenue. Jamie is also trying to get the remaining staff and volunteers to accept

change and come up with new ideas, so that they can be on the rise again. Another part of

Salisbury Art Space that she is trying to upgrade is their board members contract which I had to
type up. Jamie also asked me if I wanted to join the board to give a young person’s perspective

and to give a fresh look at Salisbury Art Space. I told her I would consider being a board member

if the people who are still currently on the board were open to change and new perspective. She

is also trying to financially stabilize this non-profit because almost every time I was at Salisbury

Arts and Entertainment District, I had to go to Salisbury Art Space’s certified public accountant

to pick up past records for Jamie. There is so much redesigning and upgrading that needs to be

done to bring this non-profit to modern day standards. With all this going on in one office with

one person, it is hard to believe that there are two more offices in this building that are in the

same position as Jamie.

The Downtown Salisbury Visitor’s Center is open to anyone who is in the downtown area

and it is the office building for Laura Soper, director of business development of the city of

Salisbury, Caroline O’Hare, local National Folk Festival manager, and Jamie Heater, executive

director of Salisbury Arts and Entertainment District. Not only is this the office building where

these people are, but it is also the resting place and check point for the Downtown Salisbury

Police Officers. With all these different offices in one building the door would be swinging open

all day long. You would never know what the person coming through the door would want. A lot

of people who came through were tourists or locals who were looking for something new to do

and to become familiar with the downtown area. Then on other occasions Laura would be the

person that someone was looking for. These people were looking for her for advice on business

licenses, how to become an established business, and many other things. Being the office of the

National Folk Festival was interesting as well because it showed me what all is needed to put on

a festival of this magnitude. I also got to be a part of the press conference that revealed the first

eight artists for the National Folk Festival that is taking place in downtown Salisbury September
7-9. It was thrilling to see how many people were excited to see who the performers where going

to be. I also got to see how to look through vendor requests, look at bids, and sort and organize

the vendors that were already apart of the event. I also got to see how much campaigning and

fundraising needs to be done to produce an event of this size. The National Folk Festival intern

and I had to fold about seven hundred monetary donation letters, pack them in envelopes and

stamp them, and mail them off. It was a rewarding feeling to see donation slips coming back into

the office with money in them, so it shows that our efforts were paying off.

Also, while working in the office building I noticed that Jamie would have people come

in and out of her office periodically that would help her to promote events or they would help her

come up with new event ideas and she would help them with event ideas. To promote the

downtown events, Jamie would talk to Lauren Barnas, from the Salisbury Chamber of

Commerce, who would help her with marketing and the design of flyers for her events. Also,

other people from radio stations and news stations would pop into her office from time to time to

bounce ideas off of her and see if she needed anything to be advertised in return. Working in this

environment allowed me to see different aspects of event planning even if it wasn’t part of the

internship that I was with.

One of the major disappointments that I had with myself throughout my internship was

that I wasn’t engaging enough with the community. I have stated before how important

networking is and I feel that I fell short in this area. There were plenty of opportunities for me to

introduce myself and become familiar with the local business owners, but I never jumped when

the opportunity presented itself. Another short coming was that I could have done more deep

digging on projects that I was given and not just skimmed the surface for the first answers that I
saw. My work could have been much more detailed and outlined, so Jamie had a clearer

understanding of what I was presenting to her.

My time with the Salisbury Arts and Entertainment District was short, but I learned so

many things in that period of time. I was taught how to get to know your community and to learn

who their major contributors are. I also was shown that knowing and socializing with local and

small business owners is the way to succeed in any event that happens in the community. If the

owners know you by your first name than they are more likely to give a donation whether it be

time, money, or a product. I also was shown that it is possible to run an organization or company

by yourself as long as you can find help when it is needed. Jamie and the Downtown Salisbury

Visitor’s Center has allowed me to see what a true event planner, event staff and an actual event

is like. I have never been more confident in my decision to move forward with this career and

eventually own an event planning business. Thank you, Jamie, for teaching me the fundamentals

of event planning both good and bad. I learned an immense amount of information on how to

plan events for a non-profit and I can take these skills and apply them to any job in the event

planning field. When working with a non-profit you have limited resources and a person really

has to get creative and work with what they have. This experience was nothing what I thought it

was going to be, but I could not be more appreciative of what I have learned through this

internship, thank you Jamie.