The Get Creative Club at Akins seeks to be a safe place for students to meet other students with similar interests and help them make the transition to a job after high school.

The club is sponsored by a non-profit organization called E4 Youth, whose founder Carl Settles has made its focus to help young people make the transition into creative industries, which often don’t have a diverse workforce. The organization provides a number of programs, including the Get Creative Clubs, to help Austin-area creative students make the leap into careers in media, advertising, and other job fields that need artistically-minded employees.

Club members said they have received many benefits from the Get Creative Club and E4 Youth.

“I have gained a lot of self-confidence in both my work and in general,” senior Rhi Ferguson said.

The club puts a big emphasis on helping students create and maintain a digital portfolio that can be easily be shared to show potential employers what they can do. Besides employability skills, the club also rewards members for active participation by providing contests and opportunities to win prizes like year-long subscriptions for professional design software like Adobe Photoshop.

Ferguson, who has been involved in the club since she was a sophomore, has earned opportunities to participate in E4 Youth’s summer program called the Creative Leadership Academy.

“I got to become more of a leader through their internships and through their clubs because they teach those sorts of things in their curriculum and they always encourage you to be more creative,” Ferguson said.

Students who have maintained their portfolio and shown dedication to self-improvement are often the ones selected for the summer program in which students are grouped to work on creative projects for real clients. For the last two summers, the Creative Leadership Academy has been virtual, but there is hope that there will be more in-person experiences this summer.

Senior Jackie Santivanez has participated in the club since she was a freshman. In May 2020, she won awards in an annual showcase event in which members of the Get Creative clubs across the Austin area compete to win awards in different categories like photography, graphic design, and audio/video production.

Santivanez said she has received many benefits from participating in the club.

“Well, this year, I managed to get a free (Chromebook). And I actually managed to talk to some people and make some friends,” she said.

The clubs’ activities are guided by college-age mentors like Naran Shettigar, who is a sophomore at the University of Texas. Shettigar provides snacks, activities, and feedback on club members’ projects. He also alerts members to various artistic contests they can enter to win recognition for their talent and work.

Shettigar emphasizes the importance of constantly working to improve skills and helps provide resources. Shettigar said he believes it’s important to have a club like this for young creatives.

“I think it’s important that especially young people and young creatives have an outlet for them,” he said. “I think it’s good to have a space where all creative people can feel like they’re in a community that’s safe for them to be able to express themselves or for them to be able through some of the same challenges together, and a space where they’re also provided certain resources that allow them to develop emotionally but also develop their careers and their skills.”

Usually, E4 Youth starts off with an Employability Curriculum to help them with social skills. In E4 Youth they help teach many skills to get you prepared for any future job and get used to the social aspect of it.

Ultimately, the organizers of the club hope that members benefit from having a social group of creatives that they can become friends with, as well as having mentors who want to help them reach their goals.

One example is Ricardo Villegas who started with the Get Creative Club program after graduating from Akins in 2016. He was recently hired to be a junior art director by Neon which is part of the New York City-based Interpublic Group family of advertising companies.

Villegas was a photo editor for The Eagle’s Eye and was involved with E4 Youth’s Shadow the Pros summer internship program after graduating high school. He studied advertising at UT and kept up his involvement with E4 Youth. He served as the college-age mentor for Akins Get Creative Club for two years.

He graduated from UT in May 2020 just as the pandemic was hitting, causing the job market tightens up. Villegas persevered and kept up his involvement with E4 Youth, helping the organization transition to an online version of its annual summer internship program while also working in retail. He has kept up his involvement with our Get Creative Club, stopping in to assist our new college-age mentors and helping our students build digital portfolios used to market themselves to potential employers.

Villegas said he believes that his involvement in E4 Youth helped him finally realize his dream of working in New York City for an advertising agency.

“Thanks to the help from E4 Youth’s programming I have been able to get real work experience interning at advertising agencies such as GSD&M and McGarrah Jesse and work with clients such as Cap Metro and Lyft, something that would have been really difficult to obtain without them. E4’s programs helped me develop my professional development. I was able to work on my portfolio and resume and get it to a palace where I was able to get hired at my dream job in my dream city.”

Villegas shared advice for Akins students considering joining the club.

“If I could give any young creatives advice it would be to take advantage of the help and support you will receive by joining E4,” he said. “I have seen the impact that they have on their students first hand.”