Denise Bolduc is an accomplished cultural leader and a catalyst for creative growth. Denise curates, programs, and produces platforms inspiring creative experiences, exchange, collaboration, and engagement.

Selected work: Biziindan!, Illuminating works, and Tributaries (Luminato Festival), The Original Peoples Party & First Nations Exchange-Turtle Island program (Tri Nations, Australia), Transforming Landscapes, New Voices New Vision, Inconvenient Ideas, and Intersections of Culture (CAPACOA), Beyond 150 Years: An Acknowledgement of Indigenous Film (REEL Canada), Miiyuu Pimaatswin Symposium (Native Women in the Arts), Songs in the Key of Cree (Tomson Highway Retrospective), Maadaadizi/Summer Journeys (PanAm Games), and Thunderbird Marketplace (One of A Kind/Miziwe Biik Development).

Denise was founding Artistic Director & Producer of Planet IndigenUs, the Indigenous Arts Program Officer (Ontario Arts Council), and the Indigenous Dance and Music Program Officer (Canada Council for the Arts), and Co-Founder & Artistic Director of the Aboriginal Music Project. She has programmed and presented in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. She is an instructor, mentor, speaker, host, a member on numerous boards and advisories, and has partnered on many artistic projects with numerous arts and cultural organizations. Denise is the recipient of the Ontario Arts Council’s Indigenous Arts Award, the SOLID Festival’s Arts Leadership Award, the Indigenous Business Leadership Award and a Fellow recipient with the ISPA International.

Artistic Director of KasheDance and Program Manager at Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO), Kevin A. Ormsby has performed with companies in Canada, USA and the Caribbean. The Canada Council for the Arts’ Victor Martyn Lynch – Staunton Award recipient and TAC Cultural Leaders Fellow, has been a Guest Artist at the University of the West Indies (Mona), Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, University of Wisconsin – Madison and Northwestern University.

Kevin’s creative research practice through KasheDance’s technical approach to dance exists in a space of constant interrogation and navigation of Caribbean cultural nuances towards a methodology of understanding space in creation, research, and presentation.

He is on the Boards of Dance Collection Danse, Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts and has served on the Boards of Canadian Dance Assembly, Prologue to the Performing Arts and Nia Centre for the Arts.

Glodeane Brown is an arts management professional, an arts and culture blogger, and a sometimes curator. She is the General Manager at CAFKA – Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area, a contemporary public art organization that puts on a free biennial of art in the public spaces of Waterloo Region. In 2021 CAFKA celebrates its 20th anniversary as the longest running public art forum in Ontario. Brown is the Founder and Editor of Culture Fancier, the blog she started in 2016 to educate, entertain, and inspire people. She writes about art events and regularly features local and international creative professionals. In 2020 she received an arts award from Arts Awards Waterloo Region for her contribution to the local arts community.

Born in Tkaronto (Toronto) to settlers from Hong Kong, Marjorie Chan is the Artistic Director of Theatre Passe Muraille. As an award-winning interdisciplinary artist, she primarily identifies as a writer with specific interest in contemporary opera and collective forms, while also maintaining an active practice as a dramaturge and director.

Sherry J Yoon, Artistic Director of Boca del Lupo in Vancouver BC, is a theatre creator and director with a passion for creating new performance through collaborative pursuits. With the company she has co-created over 45 productions, selected credits include: Fall Away Home, an inter-generational site-specific production in the forests of Stanley Park; Photog. a collaboration with established conflict photographers, and Expedition a series of iterative projects about climate change.

During Sherry’s tenure the company has received numerous awards including the Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Production, Design, Actor, Ensemble, Stage Management, as well as the Critics Choice Award for Innovation.

Her productions have toured festivals and venues across Canada, Europe and Mexico. She just completed an interactive installation about climate change and our relationship to our guilt and isolation that involves the audience charging a battery on a stationary bicycle, and plays2perform@home a national project that brings micro boxed works from across Canada to be performed with your chosen family bubble. As a freelance director she has worked with companies selected credits include: Richmond Gateway, Bard on the Beach, Vancouver International Children’s Festival, and the National Arts Centre.

Sherry also sits on the Studio 58 Arts Advisory, and has been part of Canada Council’s REAC committee and the Arts Advisory for Theatre Section and the BC Arts Council Advisory. She has launched the 3.7% local and National Leadership Initiatives – and advocacy group to support emerging and established BIPOC women and non binary artists in leadership, and most recently Stop Asian Hate an initiative that has galvanized Asian Canadian Leadership in the performing arts across Canada to help stop the spread of anti- Asian sentiments through connection and support within our communities.

Cara Loft grew up in a small farming community, called Ilderton, located just northwest of London, Ontario, Canada. She spent summers on Tyendinaga, Mohawk Territory, exploring the land and playing with her cousins. She is from the wolf clan, a proud hand drum carrier, woman’s traditional dancer, singer, photographer and poet. Cara made her first drum in 2010 at the Indigenous Student Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU). Since then, she has sat with traditional Indigenous drum carriers, song keepers and Elders in order to hone her craft of Indigenous hand drumming and singing. She also volunteers to teach hand-drumming at the Indigenous Student Centre at WLU.

Currently, Cara works for Wilfrid Laurier University (WLU) in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada as the Coordinator for the Master of Social Work, Aboriginal Field of Study Program since 2016. She graduated from WLU in 2013 with a Bachelors in Health Sciences and went on to pursue a post-graduate certificate in International Development at Humber College. More recently, Cara graduated from WLU in June of 2020 with her Masters in Cultural Analysis and Social Theory, looking at the power of music within social action. Cara has performed her singing, poetry and hand drumming at WLU events, the KW Multi-cultural festival, as well as Kultrun World Music Festival in Kitchener. Cara has experience working within the WLU, and Kitchener-Waterloo Indigenous Communities and looks to support them through art.

Cara’s ultimate goal is to foster a sense of understanding and help build relationships between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples of Canada. Cara finds that a common thread that brings all peoples together is music, and with this thread she plans to co-weave a tapestry that will bring together the people of Wilfrid Laurier University and beyond. She wishes to tell a story of coming together through music and the co-creation of an Indigi-orchestral piece of music.

Artistic Director of KasheDance and Program Manager at Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO), Kevin A. Ormsby has performed with companies in Canada, USA and the Caribbean. The Canada Council for the Arts’ Victor Martyn Lynch – Staunton Award recipient and TAC Cultural Leaders Fellow, has been a Guest Artist at the University of the West Indies (Mona), Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, University of Wisconsin – Madison and Northwestern University.

Kevin’s creative research practice through KasheDance’s technical approach to dance exists in a space of constant interrogation and navigation of Caribbean cultural nuances towards a methodology of understanding space in creation, research, and presentation.

He is on the Boards of Dance Collection Danse, Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts and has served on the Boards of Canadian Dance Assembly, Prologue to the Performing Arts and Nia Centre for the Arts.

Colin Wolf is a Métis performer, theatre maker, and activist from the North-East of Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary), AB on Treaty 7 Territory. Wolf graduated with a BFA in Dramatic Arts from the University of Lethbridge in 2014, and then spent 5 years making theatre all over the prairies with dear friends, trusted colleagues, and complicated colonial institutions.

Wolf co-founded Thumbs Up Good Work Theatre Collective with his sister Caleigh Crow in 2013. After cutting his teeth in TYA, on regional stages, and in Indie theatre in the prairies, Wolf felt the call of the North and moved to Whitehorse in October 2019 to serve as the Artistic Director at Gwaandak Theatre Society on the Territory of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än Council. Since then he has occupied his time picking berries, snowshoeing, and tending to the artistic landscape to encourage the development of thriving art makers.   

Calgary Arts Development President & CEO Patti Pon (she/her/hers) is a veteran community and arts champion. Her extensive track record of leadership and service in Calgary include staff leadership positions at EPCOR CENTRE for the Performing Arts (now Arts Commons), Alberta Performing Arts Stabilization Fund, and Alberta Theatre Projects, and volunteer positions with Calgary Foundation (board), Calgary Stampede (committee), the Asian Heritage Foundation of Southern Alberta (founding board member), imagineCalgary (steering committee),
and CKUA Radio Network (board).

In 2021 Patti was the first woman of colour to be appointed to the board of the Calgary Stampede. Patti has been awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal as well as the 2013 Harry and Martha Cohen Award, recognizing significant contribution to Calgary’s
theatre community.

Murrawarri/Ngemba woman Lily Shearer celebrates 40 years in Cultural Arts & Community Development, Performance and Theatre Making, Producing and Arts Administration in 2021. A land-based storyteller on the unceded lands of Ngemba & Gadigal peoples, Lily collaborates with communities, emerging and established artists of all genres, enabling stories for the stage, festivals, music, installation and film.  Lily’s practice of enabling First Peoples leadership and ownership initiatives is at the core of all her works, including the establishment of Moogahlin Performing Arts (2007). A process outlined in Protocols of Engagement: ‘Community Cultural Development’ Encounters an Urban Aboriginal Experience (2009). This process provided leadership opportunities for local First Peoples Australian performance practitioners and provided new opportunities for emerging local First Peoples Australian theatre-makers and practitioners.

Lily’s practice is deeply embedded in Cultural Values and beliefs of Murrawarri/Ngemba peoples, instilled to her by her Grandparents, Parent and community of Brewarrina where she was born and raised.  Commencing in Cultural Arts as a Dancer, Lily also attributes her diverse knowledge and Cultural Arts practice to the University of Elders that she has so fortunately worked with over the past 40 years in Brewarrina, Redfern, Glebe, Blacktown (Mt Druitt) and Sydney’s Greater West.  These collective wisdoms inform Lily’s practice looking at the holistic self of First Peoples and PLACE Making to include physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual well-being in relationship with Mother Earth, who sustains all life with food, shelter and clothing.

Lily was a CreateNSW Fellow (18/19), Ros Bower Award recipient (2016) and alumni of the British council’s Accelerate Program (2012). 

Adam Pottle’s books include the award-winning novels Mantis Dreams and The Bus, the poetry collection Beautiful Mutants, and the critically acclaimed memoir Voice.

His plays include the drama Ultrasound and the groundbreaking musical fantasy The Black Drum. His essays and stories have been published in Quill and Quire and This Magazine, and his most recent short story, The Rottweiler, was shortlisted for a National Magazine Award in 2020.

He currently serves as Writer in Residence at Sheridan College and is revising his new novel and preparing a new Deaf musical for production in 2022. His children’s book Butterfly on the Wind will be released in 2023. He lives in Saskatoon.

Laura Mae Lindo, Member of Provincial Parliament for Kitchener Centre, is a respected activist and educator who holds both a Masters and PhD in Education.

Laura Mae is the Official Opposition Critic for Anti-Racism, Colleges & Universities and also Chair, Official Opposition Black Caucus. 

Her commitment to building inclusive communities both within and outside of educational environments is grounded in her knowledge of how to put anti-oppression theories into practice. Recipient of the 2017 Schaus Award, Laura Mae’s ongoing work to challenge systemic racism on campus and in the community has positioned her as a knowledgeable advocate for the rights of women and girls, a respected ally to marginalized community members, and, most importantly, a courageous public speaker on issues often left unaddressed in the mainstream.

Denise Bolduc is an accomplished cultural leader and a catalyst for creative growth. Denise curates, programs, and produces platforms inspiring creative experiences, exchange, collaboration, and engagement.

Selected work: Biziindan!, Illuminating works, and Tributaries (Luminato Festival), The Original Peoples Party & First Nations Exchange-Turtle Island program (Tri Nations, Australia), Transforming Landscapes, New Voices New Vision, Inconvenient Ideas, and Intersections of Culture (CAPACOA), Beyond 150 Years: An Acknowledgement of Indigenous Film (REEL Canada), Miiyuu Pimaatswin Symposium (Native Women in the Arts), Songs in the Key of Cree (Tomson Highway Retrospective), Maadaadizi/Summer Journeys (PanAm Games), and Thunderbird Marketplace (One of A Kind/Miziwe Biik Development).

Denise was founding Artistic Director & Producer of Planet IndigenUs, the Indigenous Arts Program Officer (Ontario Arts Council), and the Indigenous Dance and Music Program Officer (Canada Council for the Arts), and Co-Founder & Artistic Director of the Aboriginal Music Project. She has programmed and presented in Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. She is an instructor, mentor, speaker, host, a member on numerous boards and advisories, and has partnered on many artistic projects with numerous arts and cultural organizations. Denise is the recipient of the Ontario Arts Council’s Indigenous Arts Award, the SOLID Festival’s Arts Leadership Award, the Indigenous Business Leadership Award and a Fellow recipient with the ISPA International.

since the late 70’s ahdri zhina mandiela has worked as a performance poet with readings, performances, lectures, and workshops around the world. she’s the founder and past artistic director of the legendary b current performing arts in toronto, canada. her work in artistic mentoring and training, and as dramaturg or director of countless play scripts, performance pieces, mainstage and touring productions has profoundly influenced new and seasoned artists across canada and beyond. 

mandiela’s current artistic push includes developing a large-scale multi-arts project (my world.a village), a new playscript called fly with factory theatre in toronto, amplifying the voices of young folx in black stage canada, developing speak! as alternative arts training for students at canada’s national theatre school, and directing theatre shows for companies in toronto and montreal.

Heather Cant is a multi-faceted theatre practitioner who has worked as a director, actor, playwright, dramaturg, and producer. She has experience with everything from large scale productions to interactive micro-performance and has worked at theatres across Canada, including the National Arts Centre, Western Canada Theatre, Citadel Theatre, Gateway Theatre, Persephone Theatre, Thousand Islands Playhouse, Chemainus Theatre, Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan, Pi Theatre, Axis Theatre, Presentation House, Upintheair Theatre, Project X Theatre, Urban Ink, and SkirtsAfire.

In addition to her freelance work, Cant has over 8 years of arts leadership experience. She served as Associate Artistic Director of Western Canada Theatre for six and a half seasons and was Artistic Producer of Project X Theatre for two seasons. She is the Artistic Producer of Phenomania Arts Society and the creator and curator of Secret City, an ongoing digital theatre project that explores the secret life of public spaces in an ever-growing list of cities. Cant recently completed her MFA in directing at the University of Calgary where she developed a practice called Process-As-Relation, an anti-imperial paradigm for centering intersectional empathy in creation — a vital lens that she brings to her new role.

Born in Moose Jaw, with family based in Saskatchewan, Cant has both family and creative ties to the community. Saskatoon audiences may remember Heather from her roles onstage in Hamlet and The Merry Wives of Windsor at Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan, or from her work as the assistant director on Persephone’s production of Mary Poppins.

Glodeane Brown is an arts management professional, an arts and culture blogger, and a sometimes curator. She is the General Manager at CAFKA – Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area, a contemporary public art organization that puts on a free biennial of art in the public spaces of Waterloo Region. In 2021 CAFKA celebrates its 20th anniversary as the longest running public art forum in Ontario. Brown is the Founder and Editor of Culture Fancier, the blog she started in 2016 to educate, entertain, and inspire people. She writes about art events and regularly features local and international creative professionals. In 2020 she received an arts award from Arts Awards Waterloo Region for her contribution to the local arts community.

Colin Wolf is a Métis performer, theatre maker, and activist from the North-East of Moh’kins’tsis (Calgary), AB on Treaty 7 Territory. Wolf graduated with a BFA in Dramatic Arts from the University of Lethbridge in 2014, and then spent 5 years making theatre all over the prairies with dear friends, trusted colleagues, and complicated colonial institutions.

Wolf co-founded Thumbs Up Good Work Theatre Collective with his sister Caleigh Crow in 2013. After cutting his teeth in TYA, on regional stages, and in Indie theatre in the prairies, Wolf felt the call of the North and moved to Whitehorse in October 2019 to serve as the Artistic Director at Gwaandak Theatre Society on the Territory of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än Council. Since then he has occupied his time picking berries, snowshoeing, and tending to the artistic landscape to encourage the development of thriving art makers.   

Natasha C. Bacchus is both an award-winning athlete and actor, combining her athleticism with her physicality in theatre. She is the recipient of numerous medals in track and field and Master Track Breaking Records, including medal positions in the Deaf Olympics and Pan Am Olympics as well as many other competitive sporting events.

Performance highlights include Shaw TV Talk Show Host, BC (2014) and actor in The Black Drum in Toronto, Canada and Reims, France (2019) with North American virtual tour (2020).

Natasha was selected winner of Canada Top 100 Black Women to Watch by the Canada International Black Women Event (CIBWE) 2019.

Glodeane Brown is an arts management professional, an arts and culture blogger, and a sometimes curator. She is the General Manager at CAFKA – Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area, a contemporary public art organization that puts on a free biennial of art in the public spaces of Waterloo Region. In 2021 CAFKA celebrates its 20th anniversary as the longest running public art forum in Ontario. Brown is the Founder and Editor of Culture Fancier, the blog she started in 2016 to educate, entertain, and inspire people. She writes about art events and regularly features local and international creative professionals. In 2020 she received an arts award from Arts Awards Waterloo Region for her contribution to the local arts community.

Artistic Director of KasheDance and Program Manager at Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO), Kevin A. Ormsby has performed with companies in Canada, USA and the Caribbean. The Canada Council for the Arts’ Victor Martyn Lynch – Staunton Award recipient and TAC Cultural Leaders Fellow, has been a Guest Artist at the University of the West Indies (Mona), Philip Sherlock Centre for the Creative Arts, University of Wisconsin – Madison and Northwestern University.

Kevin’s creative research practice through KasheDance’s technical approach to dance exists in a space of constant interrogation and navigation of Caribbean cultural nuances towards a methodology of understanding space in creation, research, and presentation.

He is on the Boards of Dance Collection Danse, Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts and has served on the Boards of Canadian Dance Assembly, Prologue to the Performing Arts and Nia Centre for the Arts.

Adam Pottle’s books include the award-winning novels Mantis Dreams and The Bus, the poetry collection Beautiful Mutants, and the critically acclaimed memoir Voice.

His plays include the drama Ultrasound and the groundbreaking musical fantasy The Black Drum. His essays and stories have been published in Quill and Quire and This Magazine, and his most recent short story, The Rottweiler, was shortlisted for a National Magazine Award in 2020.

He currently serves as Writer in Residence at Sheridan College and is revising his new novel and preparing a new Deaf musical for production in 2022. His children’s book Butterfly on the Wind will be released in 2023. He lives in Saskatoon.

since the late 70’s ahdri zhina mandiela has worked as a performance poet with readings, performances, lectures, and workshops around the world. she’s the founder and past artistic director of the legendary b current performing arts in toronto, canada. her work in artistic mentoring and training, and as dramaturg or director of countless play scripts, performance pieces, mainstage and touring productions has profoundly influenced new and seasoned artists across canada and beyond. 

mandiela’s current artistic push includes developing a large-scale multi-arts project (my world.a village), a new playscript called fly with factory theatre in toronto, amplifying the voices of young folx in black stage canada, developing speak! as alternative arts training for students at canada’s national theatre school, and directing theatre shows for companies in toronto and montreal.

charles c. smith is a poet, playwright and essayist who has written and edited twelve books. He studied poetry and drama with William Packard, editor of the New York Quarterly Magazine, at New York University and Herbert Berghof Studios. He also studied drama at the Frank Silvera’s Writers’ Workshop in Harlem. He won second prize for his play Last Days for the Desperate from Black Theatre Canada, has edited three collections of poetry (including the works of Dionne Brand, Marlene Nourbese Phillips, Claire Harris, Cyril Dabydeen, Lillian Allen, George Elliot Clarke, Clifton Joseph), has four published books of poetry and his poetry has appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Poetry Canada Review, Quill & Quire, Descant, Dandelion, Fiddlehead, Anti-Racism in Education: Missing in Action (Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), the Amethyst Review, Bywords, Canadian Ethnic Studies and others.

charles was the founder of the Black Perspectives Cultural Program in Regent Park and recently received a grant from the Ontario Arts Council’s Writers Reserve Grants Program and the Toronto Arts Council Writers Grants Program.

His first book, Partial Lives, appeared through Williams-Wallace Press and a chap book, Fleurette Africaine (wind in the leaves collective), was released in February 2012. charles is also Artistic Director of the wind in the leaves collective.

His book, Pluralism in the Arts in Canada: A Change is Gonna Come, was released in June 2012.  His new book of poetry, travelogue of the bereaved, was published in 2014 by TSAR Publications (now Mawenzi Press) and his latest non-fiction book The Dirty War: The Making of the Myth of Black Dangerousness was released in 2014 by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.  His new book, destination out, will be released in 2018 by Tightrope Press.

Cree-Saulteaux performing artist, Margo Kane is the Founder and Artistic Managing Director of Full Circle: First Nations Performance. For over 40 years she has been active as an actor, performing artist and community cultural worker. Her desire to share artistic performance that has meaning for her people is the catalyst for her extensive work, travels and consultation within Indigenous communities across Canada and abroad.

Moonlodge, her acclaimed one-woman show, an Indigenous Canadian classic, toured for over 10 years nationally and internationally. The Sydney Press (AU) during The Festival of the Dreaming praised it as being ‘in the top echelon of solo performance.’ She developed and runs the annual Talking Stick Festival and an Aboriginal Ensemble Performing Arts Program in Vancouver. Presently she is the Artistic Director for the City of Vancouver’s Canada150+ Festival, The Drum is Calling.

Recent theatre credits include reprising her role in Marie Clement’s Burning Vision in Barcelona for the Grec Theatre Festival. In 2016, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from the University of the Fraser Valley, a Mayor’s Arts Award in Theatre in Vancouver and most recently a 2017 GVPTA Career Achievement Award at the annual Jessie Theatre Awards in Vancouver.