Name: Sara Pratt
Class Year: 2026
Majors: Growth and Structure of Cities, Philosophy
Hometown: Far Hills, New Jersey & Shanghai, China
Internship Organization: Mural Arts Philly
Internship Title: Research Assistant
Location of Internship: Philadelphia, PA
What's happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing!
This summer I am working as a research assistant for artist Emilio Martinez Poppe on his project Civic Views. The project, which will be in the form of an exhibit showcased in the courtyard of City Hall, aims to give voice to the experience of municipal office workers, or civil servants, and how their reflections of their offices and office windows represent the dichotomy of being employed by a system which they are also constituents of.
This project includes a couple of working pieces: the photographs themselves, interviews and the transcripts of those interviews, and archival research into the agencies with which these civil servants are a part of. For the past month, I have been assisting Emilio in the research of these agencies: looking into Philadelphia’s atlases to understand the property that these buildings are built upon; reading reports which included survey responses or yearly budgets; reading the transcripts of the interviews to pick out topics that are brought to light in their conversations. This research will help to inform and shape the exhibit.
Why did you apply for this internship?
I wanted to pursue working with Mural Arts this summer after Jane Golden, the Executive Director of Mural Arts and a major influence on public art projects in Philadelphia, visited a class I was taking in the Fall of 2023, The Ethics of Commemoration. Her passion for the multitude of projects that Mural Arts is involved in was a look into the passion that art can have on the development of a city, and I wanted to build my exposure to that realm of urban development and growth.
Technically, I did not go through an application process for this internship. Instead, I had emailed a multitude of people connected to Mural Arts, and was, months later, given the opportunity to meet with their Director of Public Practice, Jameson Paige. From there I was given the choice of selecting an upcoming project to help with, and given Civic Views’s connection to the built environment, community engagement through oral interviews, and archival research, I felt that it would best connect with what I was practicing in my Cities classes.
What has been your favorite part of this internship?
My favorite part of this internship has been putting together my research alongside the interviews. Listening to the conversations between the artist and the government employees brought down the wall that seems to build in the name of bureaucracy, and it was a reflective process for me to then go and research these agencies knowing that there are genuine people behind these systems.
What is most rewarding about your internship?
The most rewarding thing about this internship is being able to take the time to really read and understand about the people behind the government agencies. The interviews play a huge role in this, and seeing the stories that we take the time to hear reflected in art is a beautiful experience and process to be a part of.
Career & Civic Engagement Growth and Structure of Cities Philosophy