When the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre in downtown St. Catharines, Ontario, opened its doors in 2015, it quickly became a vibrant hub for the arts in the Niagara region. To build on this success and prepare for its 10th anniversary, the Centre needed a clear roadmap for the future.

As a Co-Lead on this project, I collaborated with Bespoke to develop a comprehensive five-year strategic plan. My role involved a deep dive into the Centre’s operations and community impact. I audited box office data, analyzed audience and subscriber demographics, and reviewed donor numbers and community outreach initiatives.

This thorough audit allowed me to identify key insights and pinpoint opportunities for growth. My work included:

• Conducting internal research and preliminary situational analyses to assess the Centre’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and challenges.
• Identifying additional revenue generation strategies.
• Developing critical components of the strategic plan, including setting Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), defining actionable steps, and creating a maintenance strategy to ensure the plan’s long-term success.

The final strategic plan aims to amplify the Centre’s brand, diversify its resources, strengthen partnerships, and enhance its programming. This project was a powerful reminder of how the arts can transform a community.

“Let’s Talk About Placemaking” is Canada’s latest magazine-like publication sparking a contemporary dialogue about placemaking, authored by the Canadian Urban Institute (CUI) and Canada’s Placemaking Community initiative.

Created as a resource to inform, inspire, and open new conversations around public space planning, I was invited by the CUI to participate in the development of this project as a major collaboration partner and contributor, providing expert insights on placemaking policy innovations and highlighting some of Canada’s most creative and inspiring examples of how people and places come together to create thriving, resilient communities.

As a Project Manager for CAPACOA’s Linked Digital Future Initiative, I reached out to performing arts and arts service organizations across the country to provide education and training on the benefits of “linking” collected performing arts data to champion equity and inclusion and to enhance the digital discoverability of the sector.

Through my work on the Linked Digital Future Initiative, I’ve actively collaborated with academics, software developers and creative workers to expand on the number and quality of performing arts-related Wikidata entries as part of the WikiProject Performing Arts – supporting the work of Frédéric Julien and other leaders in this field.

In 2021, the WikiProject Performing Arts was recognized with the international WikidataCon Ecosystem Award celebrating projects that showcase how institutions and Wikidata can grow and thrive together.

The Designing Your Data Narrative Intensive will provide 15 arts organizations from across Canada with a paid opportunity to dive deep into the design and piloting of a data-to-practice process. Building upon the knowledge gained through the open sessions, additional learning modules and coaching sessions will support the cohort members on their continued data journey. Cohort participants will emerge with tools to move from being data collectors to data mentors, and ambassadors, demonstrating how data can be used to support strategy, decision-making, and innovation.

By the end of the curriculum, the 15 cohort members will have each created an Arts Data Demonstration that they can share with their networks on how they applied the teachings of the Designing Your Data Narrative cohort and their own organizational data to create data-driven narratives for their organization.

My work included the research and development of 10 online modules and one-on-one structured sessions with a Data Coach to provide guidance, training, and support in how to effectively work with data, application development and selection criteria and ongoing collaboration with the Mass Culture team to launch the learning series successfully.

As part of the City of Calgary’s investment in downtown revitalization and recognizing the importance of programming and activations that support a thriving core, the City sought expertise in creating a critical strategy to strengthen public life in downtown Calgary.

The Downtown Programming and Activation Strategy focussed on enhancing the experience of residents, business owners, workers, students, and visitors in our downtown spaces by building a strategic framework and action plan to address gaps in Calgary’s downtown private and public outdoor programming and activations.

The goal of this strategic framework is to investigate how to increase the capacity and infrastructure for programming and activations in Downtown Calgary to:

• Boost the draw of the downtown core as a destination and place to live
• Increase foot traffic, eyes on the streets, and cultural expression

My work focussed on the development of a programming and activation vision, associated goals and overarching actions to leverage Downtown Calgary’s assets and advance its vibrancy and impact as a destination through its spaces, programming, and  overall ecosystem, including governance, communications, and processes.

(in collaboration with O2 Planning + Design for the City of Calgary)

As a Strategic Advisor on this project, I provided in-depth sector expertise and research to help with the development of the Town of Milton’s inaugural 10-year Culture Plan. Work focused on desk research of comparable municipalities to inform the development of Milton’s policy and plan as well as the development of a “State of Culture in Milton” briefing memo to advise staff and Council of current cultural activity, assets and programming in Milton as well as the identification of cultural trends and best practices (programming, funding, frameworks etc.) to consider in developing the “Here to Stay” recommendations and action plan.

(in collaboration with Process for the Town of Milton)

As Consultation Lead, I collaborated with various dance leaders to design genre and cultural-specific consultation groups to understand the specific rehearsal and creation space needs required for each community. Work included researching and cataloguing existing rehearsal and creation spaces, developing survey questions, developing interview questions, holding interviews, and analyzing data to develop a new understanding of the rehearsal and creation space needs for various dance genres and artists from diverse communities.

I was retained by STEPS Public Art as part of their Cultural Planning team to lead the Shaping Space research project. The goal of the project is to identify priority areas for collective action to cultivate culturally responsive public spaces for more equitable access for all Canadians, with a special focus on equity-deserving communities.

Supported by the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Intersectoral Action Fund, Shaping Space utilized a combination of Canada-wide cross-sectoral stakeholder roundtables, public conversations, and knowledge exchange strategies to both collect and share learnings around health equity related to public space access. Work also included a collaborative partnership with Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU)’s Urban Planning Graduate Studio and deep research of municipal and other approaches to the programming and design of public spaces to identify success and gaps in creating welcoming, equitable and accessible public spaces.

In the fall of 2023, my STEPS colleague Sam Mitjavile and I were invited by the Creative City Network, a national network of municipal cultural managers navigating change within their respective arts and culture ecosystems, to present Shaping Space’s findings as a peer-to-peer best practice presentation at their annual Creative City Summit.