Creativity Works Internship: Nick Birnie ’21

It’s lunchtime on a chilly April day when Nick Birnie ’21 props his cellphone on the floor of a scaffold, then conducts a video interview while he paints an advertising mural on the side of a building. 

Mural-making is Birnie’s full-time job. 

“Every day is a little different and presents its own challenges,” says Birnie, who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. “Walking into something new every day is always exciting, and I like working outside and being around people.”

Birnie traces his love of mural work back to his days as a Drawing major at CIA. During a junior-year internship, he enlivened a basketball court at the Campus International School in Cleveland with a bold, custom-designed paint job. 

The experience helped provide a doorway to Birnie’s career as a painter and foreman for Colossal Media, which specializes in hand-painted outdoor advertising and public art. And opening doors is exactly what the internship was designed to do.

Ten years ago, the five-member inaugural cohort of CIA’s Creativity Works program completed their projects for collaborating community organizations that had taken them on as interns. The students were juniors focused on developing careers as studio artists. They spent months conceiving ideas; drafting project budgets, timelines and marketing plans; learning and building communication skills; and, of course, making the work itself for a public exhibition or project. 

By 2025, Creativity Works had expanded to 21 students, thanks to growing enthusiasm and to crucial funding from the Fenn Educational Fund and G.R. Lincoln Family Foundation. 

Creativity Works was the brainchild of Maggie Denk-Leigh, professor in the Printmaking program. She wanted students who hoped to thrive as studio artists to gain relevant work experience, as those in applied-arts majors did.

“Creativity Works supports primarily visual arts and Craft + Design majors. We had all of these really amazing students with all this potential, but they weren’t having internship opportunities,” says Denk-Leigh. 

“Creativity Works put a spotlight on that need in Cleveland, a community that is already so welcoming and supportive to creative individuals.” 

Each artist receives a $1,000 budget, guidance from an academic project leader—usually a faculty member—and support from CIA marketing and communications experts. 

It was fall of 2019 when Birnie’s interest in Creativity Works was piqued during a Lunch on Fridays presentation by students who had completed their internships the previous spring. He worked with Drawing faculty member Amber Kempthorn, his project leader, on ideas and potential collaborators.

Birnie was in talks with a local arts facility when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, closing nearly everything—including that potential collaboration.

With help from Kempthorn, Denk-Leigh and others, he connected with Campus International, a K–8 magnet school in Cleveland, where the tired basketball court badly needed a refresh.

Birnie originally hoped students and families could participate in the painting, but when the pandemic scotched that, he had them vote from a selection of designs he created for the court.

“That was what they were looking for from me, and it allowed me to remove any ego from the project,” he says.

Birnie faced other hurdles as well. After researching materials, he learned the court needed to be resurfaced before it could be painted. The cost of the resurfacing killed his budget, so it was time to get resourceful. He sought and received a contribution from a former employer as well as from Sherwin-Williams, the Cleveland-based paint company.

Campus International teacher Kate Grzelak was Birnie’s project liaison.

“Nick Birnie’s incredible work through the Creativity Works program has transformed the basketball court at Campus International School into a vibrant reflection of our school pride, perfectly capturing our colors and logo,” she says.

Amid the pandemic, the technical challenges and the budget hurdles, the project tossed Birnie plenty of learning opportunities. That’s why he considers the program so valuable.

“The main takeaway was the amount of logistical planning that goes into a project,” he says. “I think I did 200 hours of work before paint touched a surface. And what stays with me to this day in my career is that we’re always on deadlines.”

Photo caption: Nick Birnie does detail work on the center court logo for the Campus International School basketball court, which he gave a custom-designed paint job for his Creativity Works project.