In a year rife with political and social change, how can the arts serve the needs of an audience caught up in it all?

Revolution: Engaging Human Creativity, an arts leadership conference put on by B.C. Alliance for Arts and Culture on Thursday (June 8) at the Annex, hopes to address necessary changes within the industry, and the concerns of the community it serves.

The one-day-only event will feature panels and workshops on reconciliation, diversity, virtual reality, anti-racism, and citizen engagement, and the role of the younger generation in arts leadership and innovation. 

“There’s a need for change,” BC Alliance executive director Brenda Leadlay told The Georgia Straight in a phone interview. “That’s not just my opinion, there is change happening.”

This is Leadlay’s first conference since taking on the role in August 2016. She felt that revolutionizing the arts was a natural thematic choice.

She also found a natural choice for a keynote guest in Ben Cameron, an American public speaker and campaigner for performing arts. Cameron has long advocated for a “reformation of the arts,” and shifting towards models of artistic practice that serve the needs of the audience.

Speaking from an American context, Cameron says that his talk will focus in part on how to start dialogue through the arts in the wake of political upheaval.

“We are in the aftermath of a very contested, difficult political race,” says Cameron, interviewing over the phone from Minnesota. 

“There is growth of intolerance and contempt. It’s difficult to find common ground. People in the arts need to look at each other and say, ‘What is our role?' You could say it’s just entertainment, which is fine, or is there something else we are called to do?”

Leadlay admits to the irony of selecting a white male keynote speaker to headline a conference that advocates for more diversity in arts leadership.

"I thought about that long and hard," said Leadlay. “But he’s a huge champion of these ideas, he’s well known, and I don’t know anyone else who can champion those ideas. I’m sure there are people, but I don’t know them.”

Still, the lineup of panelists and speakers showcases a diversity of backgrounds, ages, cultures, and artistic practices.

Arts fundraiser Kristin Cheung, a long-time attendee of the conference, is a featured guest on a panel this year speaking about how the younger generation can offer innovative ways of restructuring arts leadership. Over the years, Kristin has noticed a gradual diversification of the Alliance conference line-up since 2013 with culturally diverse speakers and topics being given a more prominent role at the event.

Cheung will draw on her years of experience fundraising within the arts community to discuss models of funding outside of the traditional board-of-directors model.

“In the ecology of the arts system, a diverse revenue system is important,” says Cheung. "That could mean re-thinking how we even fundraise. Often, the board-of-directors model can be counter-intuitive to creating."

She recently started her own company, The Future is You and Me, to mentor young women of colour in the arts in areas of finance and self-branding skills necessary to pursue their creative projects.

“As an Asian-Canadian female in the arts, I’ve always wanted a space like that for me and my peers,” says Cheung about her company.

While she is experienced in creative arts planning, Cheung doesn’t want to send the message that millennials have all the answers. Instead, she wants to create a dialogue through which people can learn from each other.

“This will hopefully be a discussion that people can engage with online and offline to create new ways of thinking, if not about cultural diversity then about something else,” says Cheung. “It’s exciting to be a part of that.”

The full-day conference takes place on June 8. Admission is $129 for Alliance members, $179 for non-members, and $39 for students and youth.

The full line-up of speakers and events is available here.