A common discouraging piece of unsolicited advice that young people interested in the arts often hear is some variation of the phrase: “You can’t make a living as an artist.” And one of the very first things that high school students hear when they enter the Pre-College Program at the Flint Institute of Arts is how wrong that advice is.
The program, which has been a unique and important part of the FIA Art School’s offerings for nearly two decades, is aimed at helping students who are serious about the arts build their artistic portfolios, gain significant experience in their practice and exposure to several different genres of art, learn about college opportunities and art schools, and learn the many types of careers that exist within the arts.
“It originated in response to dwindling art programs in high schools,” said Donovan Entrekin, an artist and director of the FIA Art School. “We recognized that kids were still interested in the arts. There were still kids that wanted to go on to college and study art, and they weren’t really getting the support in a robust way that they needed. They weren’t getting information on careers that were available to them. They weren’t getting information on college pathways. It was just, ‘Oh, art. That’s not practical.’ And that’s just not true. So we really kind of saw an opportunity with the school here to be able to provide a program that would support these kids, give their families an opportunity to understand that it really can be a very practical career choice, and that there are just all kinds of diverse ways that artists can make a living.”
The program existed before Entrekin came to the FIA 11 years ago, but his unique background as an artist and also as someone with experience in recruiting students for art colleges helped them to tailor it even more to meet the needs of students serious about pursuing art school after high school. Entrekin noted that some art schools have their own pre-college programs, but those are typically only short sessions or workshops in summers when school is out.
“We really just saw that it was a need in the community and we had the resources to do it really well,” he said. “I was able to kind of bring in that college aspect of it and be able to talk to the families about what colleges are expecting and what they should expect during the college process. Being a local program like this and not one run by a college, we weren’t limited by just doing this as a workshop during the summer. We thought, ‘Well, we can really do something that these kids can follow through their whole high school path.’ And that’s extremely unusual.”
The program has continued to evolve to meet changing needs of students, and Entrekin credits much of that growth to Janice McCoy, artist and faculty member at the FIA and program manager for the Pre-College Program. McCoy, who has been at the FIA for five years, carefully selects faculty who teach in the program for their combination of artistic strength and their ability to teach and relate to high school age students.
“The program as it exists right now is almost unrecognizable from the way it started, and that is due largely to Janice,” Entrekin said. “Janice has built what you see now. She has done just the most incredible job of really being thoughtful about the program that these kids are going through and the teachers that are working with them. All the success of this program is due to Janice.”
The application is currently open for students in grades 9-11 who are potentially interested in pursuing art or design in college, or just serious about deepening their knowledge and skillset as artists. The deadline to apply for fall of 2026 is July 31. Classes are in the evening one night per week for three semesters per year. Along with the application, students also submit examples of their work. Once accepted, students stay in the program throughout high school.
“In the beginning, after we’re able to assess them with their application, it’s very skills-based, so they go through a 2D design course where they’re learning basic principles of how to make a good image, and then they also have a very intensive drawing class and they learn a lot about proportion and value and how to build and how to draw in a very intentional, academic way,” McCoy said. “From there, it kind of shifts into technique exploration and project-based classes, so they get to try painting or they get to try glass or they get to try ceramics, things that are still skill-building but more like exploration of things that maybe they can’t do in a traditional K-12 classroom.”
The curriculum focuses on study in several areas, including figure drawing, painting, printmaking, glass, ceramics, and more. Students are prepared for college-level work and requirements, they receive feedback and mentorship from faculty who are also working artists, they meet guest speakers and college representatives, do field trips to art schools, learn how to absorb and incorporate critiques from peers and teachers into their work, and at the end of the program participate in a final exhibition of senior student work in the FIA’s Art School Gallery.
“Along the way, we talk to them a lot about creating images that are really personal to them with narrative and starting to develop their own voice,” McCoy said. “That’s also really important for a portfolio – making things that are not super generic. Like, what is your spin on this? Which is achieved mostly through practice and self-reflection and intentional design thinking that you don’t always get in a regular art class at a school.”
Another important aspect of the program is access to the FIA’s world class facilities. As the third largest museum-attached art school in the country, the FIA Art School’s labs and studio spaces provide a rich proving ground for students deepening their own practice. In addition to classroom instruction, pre-college students are able to take advantage of open studio time during the week to come in and work on coursework or personal projects while getting feedback from instructors, and they get stipends each semester to register and take other FIA classes outside of the pre-college program. The combination of elements in the environment is aimed at helping each student find and develop their own styles and voices as artists.
Many of those resources are things students typically wouldn’t have access to until they go to college. McCoy said an exciting outcome is seeing what that headstart by gaining exposure to the curriculum and facilities in high school does for students by the time they reach college.
“To see them doing things that I didn’t get to do in college and seeing how much skill is developed because they’re starting at a much younger age engaging with this seriously, it’s just incredible,” McCoy said. “I personally kind of stumbled around a little bit in the beginning (in art school). So I see them and I’m like, ‘Dang … You’re a monster, you’re gonna be so good by the time you’re 30.’ It’s that extra support, that extra mentorship, and that extra time now and they’re just really locked in.”
Learning Self-Discipline
For Aymie Lee, the FIA’s pre-college program helped her as advertised: she’s now studying at the Interlochen Arts Academy, a prestigious arts boarding and preparatory school in northern Michigan. But it wasn’t just preparation as an artist that she gained at the FIA.
“It gives you deadlines, because a lot of artists need deadlines to put out art,” Lee said. “It really taught me time management. It also taught me the concept of office hours, because there was free work time (open studio) on Wednesdays that you could go to and work on projects for the class, and I took advantage of that every time. It honestly was probably what got me through a lot of it, just having one-on-one time with Janice or other instructors that would come in.”
Lee, whose family moved to Flint when she was two, said that the program gave her a “springboard” for college applications. She also noted that the ability to get to know teachers and learn how to communicate with them and accept constructive feedback is great preparation for post-high school education environments.
“I think it’s really prepared me in just interacting with arts faculty,” Lee said. “I had a lot of stuff from that class, I had life drawings that you wouldn’t normally have unless you were taking an advanced art class in a high school, so it bulked up my portfolio. The teachers give a lot of immediate feedback. I think it improved my technical ability quite a bit.”
Lee was homeschooled before attending Davison High School. As a homeschooler, she’d had classes at the FIA and by the time she’d reached high school, she was considering pursuing art school, so she enrolled in the Pre-College Program because she wanted arts offerings beyond what was available at her high school. She was interested in character design and drawing, and now is a film and new media major studying animation at Interlochen.
Although she came into the program with specific interests, the other areas students get to explore gave her new skills and insight into different media.
“The program really gave me freedom to explore a lot of different things,” Lee said, noting that printmaking in particular became a new area of interest for her. “Not a lot of people know about printmaking. Having someone like Janice, who’s really experienced with it, to kind of guide you was a great experience.”
That exploration process within the program isn’t simply to let students learn about different forms of art. It’s to help them narrow in on what their actual passions and interests are before they go to college, so they start off with a better idea of what they want to accomplish with their education and careers, which helps lessen costly major or program shifts once they get to college.
“They come out (of the program) ready to be adults, you can tell by how they walk, how they carry themselves, the questions they ask, the things that they’re saying,” Entrekin said. “I encountered this when I was working at the college level. A lot of kids are told by their high schools that they’re really talented, and they’re really good but they aren’t really challenged on, ‘What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Why are you making these decisions?’ the way that Janice does. And they’re surrounded by people who don’t take it very seriously. And so a lot of times, the first couple of years in an art program at the college level is weeding out those kids who it really wasn’t what was right for them.”
Multiple Paths
Flint Southwestern student Elijah Lynch has found immense value in the FIA Pre-College Program, but not because plans to pursue art school in college.
“I want to go to college for theology and biblical studies and minor in art,” Lynch said. “So I want to get my undergrad in that, and then my graduate degree and doctorate in that as well and become a professor.”
Lynch, currently a junior at Southwestern, is taking several Advance Placement courses, plays baseball, and is editor of the yearbook. But he’s also been an artist for as long as he can remember.
“I guess ever since I got a crayon and scrap of paper or whatever, I started drawing,” he said.
That passion steadily grew, and he’s become interested in different styles of painting, digital art, printmaking, and more. He also had an influential art teacher who suggested he take a look at the FIA program.
“I had a really great middle school art teacher, Julia Hurst, she suggested it, and we looked into it, and one of my friends was in it,” Lynch said. “I wanted something that was challenging.”
In addition to the ability to expand his repertoire as an artist, the connections to the greater artistic community in the Flint area has been invaluable for Lynch. He’s already had paid opportunities to do murals and he sells his art at local markets. For him, the ability to sell his work will help supplement his education costs.
“I do a ton of selling and marketing and entrepreneurship because you have to get yourself out there,” Lynch said. “The whole networking thing is not the main focus (of the Pre-College Program), the main focus is developing your skill. But when you’re at the Flint Art Walk, you can see your teachers and your fellow classmates and the models who pose and artists from around Flint, and that’s really helped to get to know people and to start to form and to see where the community is. If you have questions about things or how to get better, you have a lot of resources that you can ask not only your teachers, but your classmates and everybody else that’s around that ecosystem.”
For Lee, she was also able to take some of those connections back to her high school art class at Davison. They applied for a grant from the Greater Flint Arts Council and were able to do a show there.
“I had some work in there from the pre-college program, and I saw other artists in the same circle I was in around Flint, around Davison,” Lee said. “This is the place to be if you want to study art and pursue art, because you’re getting those opportunities you wouldn’t normally get.”
Even the senior exhibition in the spring of each year gives students skills that are transferable to other realms.
“Towards the end of the program, the students take two courses that are meant to wrap everything up, assess what they’ve made, fill holes in their portfolio if they’re applying to college, and then they also work together during the fall to curate a selection of their best work and arrange it and install it together in the Art School Gallery,” McCoy said. “That’s a really awesome opportunity, and a lot of the decision-making and the labor is put on them. So we show them how to hang things. We explain how you lay out a show, sometimes it’s quite challenging to lay out 10 different people’s work, and what sort of things you use to make those decisions.”
Making Dreams Achievable
The distinctiveness of the FIA’s Pre-College Program attracts students from all over. Olivia Bradley, a homeschooled senior from White Lake, participated in the program and, in addition to the resources for young artists the program provides, also found community.
“I loved it,” she said. “I have friends who are artists, but they aren’t working their way toward art school or wanting to pursue a career in art. So having classmates who have the same ambition as me was really helpful because we got to bounce ideas off each other and have fun doing it. And seeing how they approached different projects really made me think about things in new ways, which was helpful.”
Bradley plans to continue her education at College for Creative Studies (CCS) in Detroit where she will major in illustration. She works in several media, including digital art and oil painting. Bradley said that she’s loved drawing since she was very young and always wanted to be an artist, but the FIA Pre-College Program helped her see a realistic path to making that happen.
“I’d thought about it (being an artist), but I never really considered it as a reality, so this helped me understand how to get from A to B, basically,” Bradley said. “When you get to be a junior and senior with the FIA, they have a lot of capstone classes where they help you figure out what kind of careers you might be interested in in art, what colleges, and then looking at your portfolio and refining it so that you can present it to a college. It helped me make the dream a reality.”
For Olivia’s mom Melissa Bradley, the program was beneficial for several reasons. As a homeschool educator, it offered a way to add to the education she was providing.
“From a parent’s perspective, it’s a great companion program for even students who have art classes at school,” Melissa Bradley said. “I homeschool and she didn’t have an art class as part of our school, so I went out and found other venues for her to learn.”
She also appreciated the focus from the FIA on reinforcing to kids who are passionate about art that they can turn those interests into real careers.
“These are her skills. Why wouldn’t we pursue them?,” Melissa Bradley said. “If you look around you, art is used everywhere. We don’t exist without creatives. There are all kinds of careers in the arts.”
As applications come in and are reviewed for next year, Entrekin and McCoy noted that the program always has room to expand to more students. However, it is also geared toward students who have some background and experience with creating art, and who think they want to pursue it in their education and career. But for students who have the passion for it, the faculty at the FIA Art School specialize in providing them with the tools and direction to take it as far as they want to.
“We ask them pretty direct questions about, ‘Why did you make this choice? What is your thought process behind that?,’ and they have to think about that and put it into words,” McCoy said. “They have to explain to everyone what they were thinking, and where they felt like they were successful, where they kind of struggled. And in the beginning, that is very scary for them – it’s scary for any human being, it’s scary sometimes for adults, but you can see they start to get a lot more confident, and they’re able to more freely talk about their work. What I love, too, is they tell on themselves. They will start to learn and freely admit when they should’ve spent a lot more time on something or made a mistake, which again is really hard to admit as a human being. It’s really wild to hear 16-year-olds talk about discipline and consistency, and I think that mindset that we can expose them to here is really cool.”
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