An award-winning Cultural Strategist and Creative Producer, Bridget (she/her) has held senior municipal management positions across the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA) with dynamic portfolios spanning arts, cultural policy, grants, public art, placemaking, and festival producing ranging from small-scale activations to production of major cultural events such as Nuit Blanche Toronto and JUNO Award Host City festivities.
With roots as an independent theatre producer leading the Toronto Fringe Festival, Bridget was the co-founder and inaugural producer of the Fringe’s curated Next Stage Festival and was instrumental in successfully shifting the Fringe organization from a summer-based to year-round programming model to respond to the needs and desires of artists and audiences.
Notable accomplishments as a municipal cultural leader include the visioning, development and management of the City of Hamilton’s Events Office where she led the design and delivery of numerous civic events during the city’s creative renaissance, leveraged City resources to create more responsive, relevant, inclusive and equitable policies and programs and managed extensive community engagement initiatives to facilitate over 400+ annual creative placemaking, community and signature tourism events.
Bridget has continued to build on her foundational work in the performing arts and cultural public service sectors and is recognized as a respected arts leader, consultant, knowledgeable advisor and trusted strategic voice. She collaborates cross-sectorally with arts organizations, academia, design studios and municipalities across Canada and internationally – engaging, questioning, facilitating, collaborating and designing programs and new ways of thinking and doing to build resilient cities, communities, networks and cultural organizations to navigate unprecedented change.
Bridget is the founding Co-Chair of Mass Culture’s Research Working Group, a Toronto Arts Council Cultural Leadership Lab Fellow, a Next City Vanguard Fellow, a PlacemakingX Advocate and an International Network for Contemporary Performing Arts (IETM) Global Connector.
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I attended a 1.5-hour brilliantly hosted and co-facilitated roundtable on the social determinants of health. Bridget was amazing to collaborate with and a brilliant communicator and co-facilitator of the session. Thank you, Bridget, for the work you do in making our spaces more inclusive and accessible – I hope to work together again in the future!
I love Bridget’s passion for her work. I love that she looks beyond her immediate role and work and connects that to city building in all its aspects. Bridget is a role model that I hope many of the Department leaders will follow.
Bridget is a sharply intelligent, organized, and efficient collaborator. Human relationships are important to her, and those privileged enough to engage with her will find her to be respectful and capable of a nuanced, relational approach.
I have appreciated your effective and timely communication as well as the clear project-planning you provided; and your friendly, collegial emails have made this an enjoyable process – thank you again.