Jessica Johns is a queer nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation. Her debut novel, Bad Cree, was shortlisted for the Amazon first novel award, was a Canada Reads finalist, and won the WGA Fiction Prize.
Jacqueline Bell is curator at Walter Phillips Gallery. Recent exhibitions include Cassils: Movement (2024, co-curated with Carol Stakenas); The Shape of an Echo: Selections from the Permanent Collection (2022); darkness is as deep as the darkness is by Rita McKeough (2020); A materialist history of contagion by Candice Lin (2019); Guidelines by Carmen Papalia with Heather Kai Smith (2019); If the river ran upwards (2018) with Silvina Babich, Alana Bartol, Diane Borsato, Carolina Caycedo, T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss and Anne Riley, and Genevieve Robertson; THE CAVE (2018) by Young Joon Kwak with Marvin Astorga, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Adrian Stimson, and Kim Ye; and the exhibition and performance, Everything I Say Is True (2017) by Kite. Prior to joining Walter Phillips Gallery, Bell contributed to a number of projects and exhibitions at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions). As an independent writer, Bell has been published by C Magazine, FIELD: A Journal of Socially-Engaged Art Criticism, and X-TRA: Contemporary Art Quarterly, among others. She is a graduate of the MA Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere program at the University of Southern California.
Ivy Pan is a Toronto-born violinist turned arts administrator. In the words of Soundweavings 2025, she is “relentless in her support of participants, incredibly organized, and quick to troubleshoot any issues that arise. She was a major contributing factor to the success of this program.”
Ivy graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor of Music, studying under Annalee Patipatanakoon. She began her professional career as an educator and musician before transitioning to arts administration, working with organizations including Sistema Toronto, York Region Arts Council, The Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto Symphony Orchestra and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Ivy has developed diverse programs with meaningful social impact, including the Artrepreneur Program, a business accelerator for creative professionals; TSOUND Connections, a COVID-19 response initiative connecting youth musicians with isolated individuals; and Tuned for Tomorrow, which addresses non-performance skills for emerging artists. Among her proudest projects is following a grant which allowed her to create Dear Dearest, a poetry collective connecting Asian-identifying youth using literary arts as a tool to address #StopAsianHate.
For Ivy, music and arts administration isn’t just a career - it’s a way of de-alienating the human experience and foster meaningful connections in a world that sometimes feels divided, with anyone willing to listen.
Nicholas Dourado is all of the above and none of the latter. Adisciple of the school of creative mysteries and hard nocks and the
holder of innumerable leafs. Don't hold your expectations too tightly around this artisté.
Nicholas was generously supported by the Banff Centre Artists' Awards and the Alice and Betty Shultz Scholarships Endowment Fund for Dance and Music.
