Festival Team

Shawn Van Sluys

Program Curator, Executive Director (Musagetes)

Shawn Van Sluys joined Musagetes as its first Executive Director in January 2009. Prior to that he was the first Executive Director of the Canadian Art Museum Directors’ Organization, a national arts-service organization that advocates for the visual arts, artists, and art galleries/museums. Shawn studied art history at the University of Lethbridge and began his career in the arts at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery as a research assistant and communications manager.

Marva Wisdom

Festival Director, Program Curator

Marva Wisdom is a community leader who has built a life on passion, social justice, and inclusivity. In addition to being ArtsEverywhere’s Festival Director, she is the Director for the Black Experience Project and the founding Chair of the Guelph Black Heritage Foundation. Marva holds a Masters of Arts (Leadership) from the University of Guelph, studying the disciplines of philosophy, psychology, sociology and political science with an underlying ethical foundation.

Elwood Jimmy

Program Curator

Elwood Jimmy is a learner, collaborator, writer, artist, facilitator, cultural manager, and gardener. He is originally from the Thunderchild First Nation, a Nêhiyaw community in the global north. For close to 20 years, he has played a leadership role in several art projects, collectives, and organizations locally and abroad.

Vanessa Andreotti

Program Curator

Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti comes from a mixed-heritage family of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples spanning four continents, including semi-nomadic relatives in Abya Yala (Latin America) and Cree and Blackfoot relatives here. She works in the “in-betweens” of art, research, education, health, and wellbeing. She holds a Canada Research Chair in Race Inequalities and Global Change at the University of British Columbia where, as a professor and air-bender storyteller, she strives to enable possibilities for wiser futures and forms of co-existence.

Siddhartha Joag

Program Curator

Sidd Joag is a visual artist, journalist and producer working on issues closely related to social inequality and human rights. He is the Managing Editor at ArtsEverywhere and a member of public art collective Amber Art & Design.