Musician, producer, and arranger Aaron
Joyce is the Cultch's first Curator in
Residence.

Vancouver musician, producer, and arranger Aaron Joyce has been named as the Vancouver East Culture Centre's inaugural curator in residence.

The new Curators in Residence Program is an initiative, developed by the Cultch's youth program manager Corbin Murdoch, in which young artists will curate a series of three shows over the course of three months to be presented in the venue's 50- to 100-seat VanCity Culture Lab.

Joyce's residency will span August, September, and October. His first show, on August 30, will be a CD release party for indie rockers A Ghost to Kill Again; on September 27, he'll be hosting another CD release party for instrumental trio The Microscopic. And on October 30, he has organized a live recording session of the nine-piece atonal-afrobeat orchestra Spearkbreak.

"The primary reason [for the program] is that there aren't a lot of great venues for emerging artists and younger artists," explained the Cultch's artistic director Heather Redfern, by phone. "We felt with our Culture Lab we had an opportunity to showcase some of those artists in a really good venue....By having young artists curate themselves, it's their crowd; they know the work, they know the artists, they understand what they're trying to do, way better than me trying to figure out."

Following Joyce's residency, spoken word champion Brendan McLeod and cellist/composer Cris Derksen will also participate in the first season of the Curators in Residence Program.