Image: Sarah Walker

Wire #9: Adaptations and Innovations in North American Performing Arts Markets

Wed 19 Aug 2020

In this conversation event, APAM engages with directors and producers of arts markets and arts festivals in the United States and Canada, who are exploring innovative ways to sustain international engagement in the foreseeable future. How have they adapted to address significant and rapid change? Join us to hear their thinking, ideas and plans for activity happening online and in hybrid virtual/real life spaces.

Our panellists are Krista Bradley (APAP), Boomer Stacey (IPAY/PACT), Ruth Wikler (TOHU/MICC) and Tim Wilson (WAA), hosted by Collette Brennan (Abbotsford Convent).

This conversation is presented in association with the Australia Council for the Arts.

This session will be live captioned. AUSLAN interpreting can be available upon request. Please email us for details.

Read Summary Here See past events here
    MEET THE PANELLISTS

    Krista Bradley
    Krista is Director of Programs and Resources at the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP), the USA’s national service organisation for the performing arts presenting industry. At APAP she’s responsible for the professional development programming for the annual conference as well as year-round programs, leadership development initiatives, regranting programs and resources that advance the skills, knowledge and capabilities of APAP’s membership. Prior to APAP, she was Executive and Artistic Director of BlackRock Centre for the Arts, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts centre in Maryland, and Program Officer of Performing Arts for Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. She brings more than twenty years of experience working in the non-profit, performing arts, and philanthropy sectors as a curator, funder, arts administrator and consultant for organisations such as the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, the Walker Arts Centre, Houston Grand Opera and Opera America. Krista is also a practicing musician, a current member of the Thomas Circle Singers, a DC-based choral ensemble, and a former board member of APAP. She holds a B.A. degree in Literature and Society from Brown University.

    Boomer Stacey
    Boomer is the Executive Director of International Performing Arts for Youth (IPAY) as well as holding the same role for the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres (PACT). Aside from work in international partnerships and collaboration, organisational leadership, event production, learning and networking, and festival curation, Boomer also has a wide range of experience in international performing arts for young audiences. Prior work includes the Artistic Directorship of the renowned Milk International Children’s Festival of the Arts at Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. Boomer holds a BFA, visual arts, specialising in photography and visual arts. He splits living locations between the ’burbs just outside Toronto on the traditional and treaty territory of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nations, the Mississauga Peoples and the treaty territory of the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation, and a little cabin in the woods by the lake in Northern Ontario on traditional lands of the Anishinabi, Huron-Wendat and Algonquin Peoples, and on the road attending many national and international theatre events and festivities.

    Ruth Wikler
    Ruth is the Deputy Director of Programming for Circus Arts at TOHU, Montréal’s premier presenter of contemporary circus. Appointed in June 2019, Ruth directs the MICC (International Contemporary Circus Market); develops circus programming for the Montréal Complètement Cirque Festival as well as TOHU’s annual mainstage season; supervises TOHU’s training and residency program for circus artists; and oversees TOHU’s museum collection of circus history art and objects. Ruth trained in circus at Circomedia in the UK and founded and directed a contemporary circus troupe, Cirque Boom, in the early 2000s. She came to TOHU after curating seven seasons of contemporary international theatre and performance for Boom Arts in Portland, Oregon. She also previously served as Associate Director of Programs for the Martin E. Segal Theatre Centre in New York, connecting global theatre, NYC theatre, and academic theatre research; and in various capacities for many other NYC arts organisations.

    Tim Wilson
    Tim is Executive Director of the Western Arts Alliance (WAA), the non-profit membership organisation serving performing arts touring and presenting in the western United States and Canada. Under Tim’s leadership, WAA has undertaken programs to encourage and support the participation of marginalised artists and communities, including Advancing Indigenous Performance, a national initiative to build capacity and networks for First Nations performance. Tim frequently presents at meetings and conferences on the performing arts including APAP, Shanghai Performing Arts Fair, the Government of Quebec Ministerial Forum, China Association for the Performing Arts, Pacific Contact, and Oregon Arts Commission. From 1993-1997, Tim was Executive Director of Alaska State Council on the Arts. Early in his career, Tim served eight years as a Program Manager at Sealaska Heritage, a tribal foundation serving the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people of Southeast Alaska. Tim holds a B.A. in Cinema from the University of Southern California.

    Collette Brennan – Panel Host
    Collette is the CEO of Abbotsford Covent in Melbourne, Australia’s largest multi-arts precinct. She is also Chair of the Sunshine Coast Arts Advisory Board and a Board member of the International Society for the Performing Arts (ISPA). Previously she was Director of International Development, Acting Executive Director of Arts Development, and Director of Market Development at the Australia Council for the Arts; Executive Director of Brisbane’s internationally acclaimed contemporary circus Circa; the founding Creative Director of The Edge, State Library of Queensland’s program for children and young people; General Manager of the Queensland Performing Arts Centre’s Out of the Box Festival for 3 to 8 year olds, and; Executive Officer of Youth Arts Queensland, the state’s peak body for youth arts and cultural development. Collette has also worked in schools as a drama and history teacher, as a lecturer with QUT and Griffith University, and as a youth arts worker in a range of school and community contexts with children and young people.