Black History Month in Fine Arts

by | Feb 10, 2026 | Faculty, Graduate, School of Music, Undergraduate, Writing

From left: Shane Book, Junie Desil, Wayde Compton

February is Black History Month. It provides an important opportunity to explore and celebrate the historical and current contributions of Black people in Canada. At UVic, we recognize the many achievements of Black faculty, staff and students.

We also acknowledge ongoing work is needed to support racial equity, diversity and inclusion. In December 2021, UVic signed the Scarborough Charter on Anti-Black Racism and Black Inclusion in Canadian Higher Education. Work is underway to meet commitments outlined in the Scarborough Charter through community engagement, the collaborative efforts of the Scarborough Charter Steering Committee and committeed actions through the Equity Action Plan. There are also many individuals and groups across campus working toward these goals. Learn about Black inclusion and flourishing at UVic.

Among the many UVic events celebrating Black History Month in February, a number feature members of the Fine Arts community, including both students and professors:

Before the Rain Falls immersive exhibition
Feb 4 & 5 in the SUB Upper Lounge.

Experience art, reflect and engage in discussions of migration, heritage, identity, memory and home via pieces of art by five Visual Arts students, as organized and curate by Theatre student Divine Mercy Ezeaku as part of the Phoenix mainstage production A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain (running Feb 12-21).

 

My Black History is Poetry, is Jazz
7:30pm Tues, Feb. 10 at the School of Music’s Phillip T. Young Recital Hall

Sonnet L’Abbé will offer an experience more musical than a poetry reading, more literary than a jazz vocal performance, sharing some of the Afro-diasporic music and poetry that helped shape them into the artist they are today. Nick Peck will play jazz piano. Presented by The Malahat Review, with the departments of English, History, and Writing.

 

Celebration of Black Authors
1:30-2:30pm Wed, Feb. 25 in Fine Arts room 103

The UVic Writing department is hosting a reading and discussion from a favourite Black author, open to faculty, staff and students to participate or simply attend as audience.

 

Between Weight and Witness
7-9pm Wed, Feb. 25 online via Zoom

Acclaimed poet and Writing professor Shane Book (All Black Everything) together in conversation with current Writing graduate student Junie Désil (Allostatic Load): two powerful voices in contemporary Black Canadian literature reflecting on on their writing practices, the intersections of art and activism, and what it means to tell Black stories in the current moment.

 

 

BC Black History Awareness Society Keynote
7-9pm Fri, Feb 27 at the Baumann Centre, 925 Balmoral

Join Writing professor Wayde Compton in conversation with current Writing graduate student Junie Désil at this free public event, also featuring a musical performance by Caleb Hart. Compton co-founded Vancouver’s Black-led Hogan’s Alley Society and also Commodore Books, Western Canada’s first Black Canadian literary press, while Désil is an award-winning poet and author.

Mixing myth & reality on the Phoenix stage

by | Feb 6, 2026 | Graduate, Theatre

One mother’s determination. One child’s future. One extraordinary world. What can you expect from a mythic tale where sheep’s wool becomes rain clouds? Though it may sound whimsical, A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain is a bold and haunting fable that confronts the systems shaping our lives today. Running February 12–21, Phoenix Theatre presents Sami Ibrahim’s contemporary play  as directed by current graduate student Sophia Treanor.

Coming from New York City, Treanor will bring a sense of magical realism to A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain. Given the current events in the US regarding immigration, this mainstage production intertwines that reality with myth to create a haunting tale, that also serves as Treanor’s MFA thesis project. The author of the play, British Palestinian playwright Sami Ibrahim, often writes about ordinary people finding their place in a complex society, and wrote this play after being inspired by his father’s journey to citizenship. The play follows Elif, an undocumented immigrant, who begins her journey to citizenship after becoming a mother. Ibrahim writes a powerful story that follows this determined mother who hopes to reshape her child’s future.

 

A politically important story

When Treanor first read Burst of Rain in 2023 (following its world premiere at 2022’s at Edinburgh Festival Fringe), she considered it beautiful and playful. “I found it really captivating and, politically, a very important story to bring forward,” she says in relation to the US issue of their ongoing Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Treanor will be placing the audience on three sides of the action in UVic’s Chief Dan George Theatre to intentionally draw people into Elif’s world and experience, rather than observe, from a distance.

Treanor describes the play as “a searing look into what the experience of an undocumented person is like,” and is hoping to give the audience the opportunity to live inside these troubles with it being considered news. “ICE is horrifying theatrics of terror,” she says. “We’re at this point where there’s so much devastation, it’s hard to wrap our minds around it.” On stage, Elif’s journey will use imagery and storytelling to deepen the emotional impact and invite the audience to connect with the character in a deeply personal way. With this production, Treanor says she feels “excited to be working on something that I hope helps give people an opportunity to live inside this trouble.”

“The playwright is quite brilliant,” she continues. “He somehow takes us through this really devastating story with quite a playful sense of imagination. There’s a lot of playfulness and that’s sort of a hallmark of magical realism.” For Treanor, she says Burst of Rain helps locate the humanity of the person moving through this experience. “Being inside of a situation, day in and day out, having to make something of your own experience of your life, is quite a heroic act on its own.” She says this narrative of feeling shattered is challenged in this play, which “helps us sit inside of this woman’s life.”

Never-ending creative freedom

A director, performer, educator and biodynamic craniosacral therapist, Treanor has performed in a number of US-based private and public spaces, theaters and galleries including the Living Theater, the Gene Frankel Theater, the Stella Adler Center for the Arts and many others, as well as serving on the faculty of the Stella Adler Studio of Acting and the Harold Clurman Center for New Works in Movement and Dance Theater.

This will be Treanor’s first time directing a play for both UVic’s Phoenix Theatre and on a stage like this. With a bigger budget than her previous experiences, she’s looking forward to what direction the production will go in. “It’s like I got to experience my imagination expanding,” she says when it comes to her creativity. “We don’t need to cut much because of the limits of my abilities or imagination, and that’s been really fun.”

Ibrahim wrote the play to fit three actors, but Treanor wanted to get as many students involved in the production as possible, so she broadened the cast to include 12 student actors. “My favourite thing about the performing arts is something becoming much bigger than any one person, and I’m really experiencing that in this process.” Even the sound and lighting teams for this production are student designers [including Emma Brown (sets), Jolie Cree (costumes), Sasha Pisiak (lighting) and Gordon Geddes (sound)] and the director is enjoying working with this level of production value.

“I’ve never gotten to play with this kind of a design element before,” she says about toying with the storytelling element of the narrative. “I’m not hiding the theatrics — because it’s not realism — and that’s been really fun to give more space for the designers to play too.”

Director & MFA candidate Sophia Treanor

Chasing a dream

Originally from California but having spent the last 17 years in New York City, while Treanor calls the Big Apple “one of [her] soul’s home,” she admits to feeling “dried out” from the environment there. One night, she dreamt about a coastline that felt “like a distant call.” She says it was “the most beautiful narrative dream I’ve ever had in my life,” which spurred her desire to take action. When she saw photos of Vancouver Island, she knew this was where her dream was set.

When first visiting the Island, she says it felt like she was on a retreat, as she was able to reconnect with the planet. “Natural forces of the earth have always been a subject in my work and a big part of the way I relate to the creative process,” she says. Those feelings combined with having tutelage, a revisiting scholarship, and being free from time and money limitations solidified that Vancouver Island — and UVic’s Theatre program — was the place for her.

Looking ahead, she’s hoping to bridge the gap between her family locale and her creative life. Whether it’s applying for jobs, teaching or working on a project, she “would love to stay” on the Island when she’s completed her thesis on this project.

“My favorite thing about the performing arts is how something becomes much bigger than any one person, and I’m really experiencing that in this process,” she says.

—Claudia Phillips, with files from John Threlfall

A Sudden Violent Burst of Rain runs February 12-21, 2026, at UVic’s Phoenix Theatre. Tickets available via the box office at 250-721-8000

Small data Gen-AI workshop

by | Feb 6, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Graduate, Research, School of Music, Theatre, Undergraduate, Visual Arts, Writing

Training the Muse: A workshop on small data Gen-AI for artistic practices

Generative AI tools have become increasingly visible in artistic practice, however, most artists encounter AI through large-scale corporate platforms trained on massive, opaque datasets. These systems often obscure authorship, flatten aesthetic diversity and embed cultural biases. This workshop offers an alternative approach: a small-data, artist-centred methodology that emphasizes control, transparency, and cultural specificity. Participants will work with their own datasets, gaining creative autonomy while learning ethical and technically accessible AI workflows grounded in personal and situated artistic practice.

Join us February 28-March 1 for a no-cost, two-day workshop on the Autolume software, a visual AI system from SFU’s Metacreation Lab. Led by lab director Philippe Pasquier, participants will craft personal datasets, sculpt custom GANs and explore real‑time generative play, gaining creative control impossible with corporate, large‑scale platforms. Past editions include Toronto, Montréal, Berlin, and online.

Register here to join this growing movement of artists redefining authorship, cultural specificity and artistic agency in AI. Bring your images, your vision and your curiosity! Maximum registration for this workshop is 32. Watch this November 2025 UVic talk with Philippe Pasquier.

This workshop is made possible through the generous support of UVic’s Office of the Vice President Research & Innovation, Kula: Library Futures Academy and the Canada Research Chair in Emergent Digital Art Practices with the Faculty of Fine Arts.

Sounding Grounds festival debuts

by | Jan 22, 2026 | Alumni, Events, Faculty, Graduate, School of Music, Visual Arts

Sounding Grounds is a gathering of new music, experimental sound and interdisciplinary art. Running Jan 30-Feb 1 at UVic’s School of Music, this multi-day festival is a meeting place for UVic’s most adventurous creators. Featuring student and faculty composers, improvisers, builders, thinkers, and listeners, Sounding Grounds invites you to explore the curious and ever-evolving terrain of contemporary sound.

Schedule of events:

Fridaymusic: New works by student composers

A concert of bold new works by UVic student composers that spans acoustic, electronic and hybrid forms. Expect unexpected sounds!

12:30 – 1:20pm Friday, Jan. 30 • Phillip T. Young Recital Hall • Admission by donation • More info

 

UVic Orchestra: Nobles, Smetana, Schumann

Conductor Yariv Aloni leads the UVic Symphony Orchestra in a dynamic program that journeys through vivid musical landscapes, from operatic drama to symphonic grandeur. Featuring Jordan Nobles’ Apollo—an evocative, contemporary work exploring light and motion.

8pm Friday, Jan. 30 • Farquhar Auditorium, Jamie Cassels Centre • Tickets $15-$28, free for UVic students • More info

 

Sonic Improvisation Workshop

Bring your instrument, voice, or just your curiosity. A low-pressure, high-reward space for spontaneous sonic exploration. No experience necessary.

1:30-3pm Sat, Jan. 31 • room B037, MacLaurin Building • Free • More info

 

Faculty Concert Series: Local Currents

UVic faculty and staff share original works that highlight the depth, range, and individuality of our community’s artistic voices. The program features Anthony Tan’s bound/woven for electronics; a collaborative laptop and video performance by Megan Harton & Isaiah Doyle; Taylor Brook’s Hypha for electric guitar with electronics and video projections; Sarah Belle Reid’s Brittle Stars for voice and electronics; Lauren McCall’s work for flute and electronics; Ajtony Csaba’s Wind Drumming for piano and live electronics; and Kristy Farkas’s In this light for piano.

7:30pm Sat, Jan. 31 • Phillip T. Young Recital Hall • By donation • More info

 

VR Experience: The Witness Blanket

Explore Carey Newman’s powerful national monument through virtual reality. Inspired by a woven blanket, the Witness Blanket is a large-scale work of art. It contains hundreds of items reclaimed from residential schools, churches, government buildings and traditional and cultural structures from across Canada. This is a space for listening, remembering, and honouring truth and reconciliation.

2-5pm Sunday, Feb. 1 • CReaTeLab, room B004, MacLaurin Building • More info • Free, but reservations recommended: book a time here

 

Shapes for Sounds Vol. 04 Oooooooooooooooooooooooo

Part gallery, part playground, this annual variety throwdown transforms space through sculpture, sound art, noise, and performance. A tribute to the Merz art movement, the evening brings together action painting, voice, video, power electronics, and embodied performance—exploring the relationships between sound, the body, materials, and architecture. Featuring the Puppets Forsaken troupe: Hermit, Agnes, Alex Taylor-McCallum, Edith Skeard, Kegan McFadden, Ciel Boehme, John Boehme, Paul Walde, Grace Salez, Evan Locke, Mitch Renaud, Derk Wolmuth, and Lesley Marshall.

2-5pm Sunday, Feb. 1 • Phillip T. Young Recital Hall • By donation • More info

A Bridge Between Two Worlds: Kirk McNally’s new ADCARA role

by | Jan 16, 2026 | Art History & Visual Studies, Award, Faculty, Graduate, indigenous, News, Orion Series in Fine Arts, Research, School of Music, Theatre, Visual Arts, Writing

While new hires are a regular part of faculty life, it’s rare that we see the creation of entirely new administrative roles. One of the Faculty highlights of 2025 was the inauguration of two brand-new Associate Dean positions: Associate Dean Indigenous, held by Writing professor Danielle Geller, and Associate Dean Creative Activity, Research and Administration (ADCARA), held by School of Music professor Kirk McNally.

A professional sound engineer, McNally is a familiar face at faculty meetings: he first joined our School of Music in 2006 along with the then-new Music & Computer Science program before being appointed a professor of music technology in 2016; his own research and creative work has been supported by the likes of SSHRC, the Canada Council, the Banff Centre and UVic’s Learning & Teaching Centre, among others. In 2025, McNally was awarded the UVic Provost’s Advocacy & Activism Award in Equity, Diversity and Inclusion for his efforts to host a diverse range of musicians and fostering a vibrant learning environment for aspiring sound engineers and producers.

Now, as our inaugural ADCARA, McNally’s role focuses on a number of linked priorities, including,

  • external grants and awards support and advocacy, and strategic positioning of faculty
  • advocacy for Fine Arts via different UVic councils and committees
  • undertaking various strategic initiatives around collaboration, both on and off campus, and
  • graduate student curriculum support and development of new grad student initiatives and collaborations.

Boil it down, and McNally sees the ADCARA position as a means of promoting, supporting and benefiting Fine Arts as a whole.

“It’s about representation within different committees and at different levels, both across the university and at the community level,” he explains. “We’re clearly acknowledged as a Faculty within the university, but we don’t always have a voice to negotiate on specific topics.”

A bridge between worlds

While other faculties on campus have had similar roles for decades now, the ADCARA offers a new opportunity for Fine Arts.

“We haven’t had a role like this before, but I think it will allow people to have less work happening off the side of their desks — especially as the university becomes more of an interdisciplinary place where we work collaboratively across units,” McNally says.

“So, I do a lot around representation and acknowledgement of how research is viewed and defined on campus, including creative activity and creative works . . . . not everyone really understands what we do, how we do it and why it matters both on and off-campus.”

McNally in the CReaTe Lab

Describing the ADCARA role as being “exciting and very stimulating”, McNally feels it’s a logical step for him. “It fits well with my training as a recording engineer, who act as the intermediary between an artist and their audience, and help the audience receive the project in the way the artist intended — you’re like a bridge between two worlds, making connections for a specific outcome. Because of that, I really value opportunities to work across units on interdisciplinary projects . . . it just feels natural to collaborate with different talent while also getting the opportunity to learn about their activities.”

By way of example of how his position can function, McNally points to the November 2025 Science + Art = Actionevent featuring Swiss glaciologist Andreas Linsbauer of the University of Zurich.

“We had the Swiss Embassy approach [Crookes Professor] Sean Holman, who didn’t necessarily have the capacity to quickly organize anything mid-semester, so I was able to assist with making it happen.” As a result, Fine Arts joined with KULA and the Geography department to host an event bridging science, art, technology, education and climate change, attended by representatives from departments across campus. “It would have been very easy to say ‘we’re just too busy right now’, but then we wouldn’t have had this opportunity, and all those people wouldn’t have been in the room. Instead, we were able to showcase Fine Arts research and activity, and advocate for future collaboration.”

2025’s Science + Art = Action event

Giving back and catching up

While his ADCARA duties are in addition to his ongoing role with the School of Music, McNally sees them less as a burden and more as an opportunity.

“This institution has supported my growth and development for the past 20 years, so I see this as one way of giving back towards what’s been a very positive experience for me,” he says. “Before I was hired, for example, there was no CReaTe Lab in Music, but now there’s so much activity in there and that space will continue to grow in the years ahead.”

He also feels the ADCARA position will help better frame Fine Arts for the UVic of the future. “Since I was hired in 2006, we’ve certainly seen an increase in UVic’s profile as a research campus,” he says. “Not having had a role like this until now, we’re playing a lot of catch-up to convince people where we are in research and creative activity. But we’ve done amazing things lately.”

Over the past five years, some of those “amazing things” include the hiring in Visual Arts of Canada Research Chair Joel Ong, Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices Heather Igloliorte and the elevation of Carey Newman from the limited term Audain Professor to UVic’s Impact Chair in Indigenous Art Practices. Meanwhile, the Black Scholar Fund  has enabled Fine Arts to bring in the likes of professors Lauren McCall in Music and Wayde Compton in Writing, while the Indigenous Recruitment Support Fund attracted professors Mique’l Dangeli (AHVS) and Marion Newman (Music). And, as recently as January 2026, we’ve seen Sarah Belle Reid join us as our newest Music technology professor.

But, as McNally points out, “when you’re coming in at those levels, there’s an expectation that there will also be capacity to facilitate activity and support people’s work, so that’s one of the ways this [ADCARA] role will help our faculty.”

Grad student support

Another bullet-point in the ADCARA brief is graduate student curriculum support, and development of new grad student initiatives and collaborations.

“This role will help to lighten the load of our Associate Dean Academic, so they’re not handling both undergrad and grad curriculum,” he says. “I also advocate for our graduate students with the Faculty of Graduate Studies to build greater opportunities and better support in forums where we traditionally had less presence.”

For examples, he points to the annual grad student Ocean Networks Canada ArtScience Fellowship and our Pacific Opera Victoria partnership. “It’s about finding opportunities when there’s a desire from a specific department, working in concert with them to help get things off the ground.”

Visual Arts grad student Parvin Hasani (left) was the 2025 ONC ArtScience Fellow

Coming up next

Looking ahead to this semester, McNally is particularly excited by the extended visit by Orion Scholar Mike Ananny, a communications and journalism professor with USC.

“He’s a highly respected academic: a former Trudeau Scholar and advisor to the federal Minister of Heritage, he was on the advisory committee for the future of CBC and Radio Canada . . . he’ll be really interesting for people to engage with, especially in this time of cultural sovereignty.”

During his three months in Fine Arts, Ananny will be specifically focused on the use of creative AI and its impacts on the arts, artists and creatives.

“Anyone who’s working with or contemplating creative AI, how it works, how it’s being used, how it’s affecting the sense of artistic self and identity across the creative field,” says McNally. “He’ll be giving a public Orion lecture plus offering curated workshops with our grad students and faculty.”

Planning for the future

Ultimately, McNally feels the ADCARA position nicely aligns with his own research and creative activity.

“The way I helped develop the music and technology program is similar to how the sciences build a lab: using grants to help a group of students work around aligned research objectives. I’ve also engaged with external communities and worked to bring them to campus through events like the Society for Music Production Research conference and the Audio+ series, which allow students to see their futures in the industry. Creating a culture of research is one of the goals of this position, so it’s about both seeing what’s possible and what people can aspire to.”

The Theatre department’s focus on applied theater is a good example of that: an emerging field just 30 years ago, UVic is now seen as a world leader thanks to the work of past professors like Warwick Dobson and Julianna Saxton, and current professors Yasmine Kandil and Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta.

A more recent example is Visual Arts professor Heather Igloliorte’s Taqsiqtuut Indigenous Research-Creation Lab. “Look at who she’s brought in during the first year of her CERC position — people are literally coming here from all over the world because they’ve got connections with her and now they know what we’re doing here. This kind of work is driven by relationships and building relationships is one of the things we’re really good at in Fine Arts.”

Opening day for Heather Igloliorte’s  Taqsiquut Research Creation Lab in 2025

2025: Year in Review

by | Dec 29, 2025 | Alumni, Art History & Visual Studies, Award, climate, Faculty, Graduate, indigenous, Orion Series in Fine Arts, Research, School of Music, Theatre, Undergraduate, Visual Arts, Writing

It’s hard to believe 2025 is already over: some years crawl like watching paint dry on a canvas, while others speed by at the rate of a can’t-put-it-down bestseller. Given that the 2000s will likely come to be known as the century when attention spans reduced faster than polar icecaps, we’re pleased to offer this quick recap of the year that just was.

New faculty

We’re always excited to welcome fresh talent to our faculty . . . especially in times of fiscal restraint. This year saw Lauren McCall join our School of Music as a professor in composition and music technology in January, while artist-researcher and Tier II Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Emergent Digital Art Practices Joel Ong joined our Visual Arts department in July. And just on the horizon but already announced is the news that Sarah Belle Reid will join Music as a professor in technology starting in January 2026.

While not new faculty, two professors taking on new roles this year were Writing’s Danielle Geller, who is our new Associate Dean Indigenous, and Music’s Kirk McNally, who steps up to the role of Associate Dean Creative Activity, Research and Administration.

Lauren McCall

Student activity

Whether it’s grad student activity like the annual Audain Foundation Travel Awards or the Ocean Networks Canada ArtScience Fellowship, or undergrad achievements in the annual Community Impact Awards, we’re always proud of our student achievements.

Visual Arts MFA candidate Edith Skeard was named one of just five BC graduate students to receive a $7,500 Travel Award from the Audain Foundation in September, which she’ll use for a month-long Sound Lab residency in Struer / Copenhagen for an exploration of sound art within a sculptural context. Meanwhile, another Visual Arts MFA — Parvin Hasani — spent her summer as the ONC ArtScience Fellow researching the extreme ecosystems of deep-sea hydrothermal vents in order to create her own conceptual sculptural pieces, which she debuted in the September exhibit Tides of Memory.

Parvin engaging with visitor at her ONC exhibit

July saw UVic Chamber Singers director Adam Con and 21 singers  head to the acclaimed Sicily Music Festival & Competition, where School of Music professors Benjamin Butterfield and Anne Grimm were both part of the festival’s international teaching faculty; other Music students also attended as solo artists, offering good student representation.

Also in Music, this year’s Concerto Competition celebrated exceptional student musicians whose talents span genres, generations, and geographies. The competition finals were held in April 2025 and performances by winners Tamsyn Klazek-Schryer, Olivia Pryce-Digby and Ethan Page are rolling out during our 2025-26 concert season.

This year’s juried Community Impact Awards saw Music’s Sophie Hillstrom and Theatre’s Sage Easton-Levy each win $1,000 for their work with the Early Music Society of the Islands and Sooke Youth Theatre, respectively. Since 2021, we’ve awarded over $15,000 to 13 students from across Fine Arts for projects ranging from murals, theatre productions, music performances, art shows, curatorial projects and more, all within Greater Victoria’s regional boundaries.

November saw three Writing students — Raamin Hamid, Fernanda Solorza and Ashley Ciambrelli — run a series of climate survivor testimonials in the UK’s Guardian media outlet as part of a Climate Disaster Project partnership, hooked to the COP30 UN Climate Change Conference in Brazil. That same month also saw 95 students collaborate on the presentation of 18 commissioned five-minute plays performed as part of the International Climate Change Theatre Action project.

And it was exciting to see AHVS PhD candidate Amy Anderson’s recent Rocky Horror Picture Show story on The Conversation Canada — one of the top-three most-read stories by UVic authors this fall!

New research lab

February saw the launch of the new Taqsiqtuut Research-Creation Lab in our Visual Arts department. Led by Visual Arts professor Heather Igloliorte — who is also UVic’s only Canada Excellence Research Chair — Taqsiqtuut has had a busy year of programming, bringing artists, researchers, curators and creators from around the international circumpolar region in to connect with faculty and students alike.

“I have a large network of colleagues and artists I’ve been working with for a long time, partners who are working and thinking across Indigenous cultures and learning from each other in order to move towards this place of transformation and decolonization,” says Igloliorte.

It was a full house at the Taqsiqtuut opening

New artistic residency

This year we welcomed Candian artist Siobhan Humston as the inaugural UVic Rubinoff artist-in-residence. Selected from a field of 50+ applicants, Humston spent six weeks developing new work at the Jeffrey Rubinoff Sculpture Park on Hornby Island as part of this paid residency; she also mounted a public exhibition here at UVic in October.

“It’s always hard to imagine what may come from working in a new place,” says Humston, who has held a number of international residencies. “As an artist, the JRSP presents a surprise physicality to me — even though my resulting work may not be large, I feel like it has taken a lot of energy and space to produce, which reflects on the expansive nature of the park itself.”

Visitors at Siobhan Humston’s UVic opening

Visiting artists

There’s been no shortage of high-profile visits this year, ranging from Canada Council for the Arts CEO Michelle Chawla to visiting professors like Andreas Linsbauer, Philippe Pasquier and  representatives from the Chilean Embassy. “We’re not doing this alone: we’re part of a dynamic arts ecosystem . . . and universities are an important part of this world,” said Chawla. “We need to tell the story of what the arts bring to our communities and why that matters.”

Our long-running Orion series and Living Artists, Living Art visiting artist program welcomed the likes of artists Deanna Bowen, Don Kwan, Meryl McMaster, Lan “Florence” Yee, poet Karen Solie, author Saeed Teebi, conservator Helene Tulo, scholar Mary Storm, artist Jerry Ropson, our own Visual Arts professor Beth Stuart, artist Marlene Yuen, celebrated theatre alumni Sara Topham and Pablo Felices-Luna and many others. Meanwhile, d’bi.young anitafrika was the third presenter in our annual donor-funded Lehan Family Activism & the Arts Series in February, and veteran journalist Stephen Maher was our latest Harvey Southam lecturer in October. Click on the links above to watch their public talks.

Michelle Chawla (right) in conversation with Visual Arts chair Megan Dickie

We were also pleased to honour noted local artist, art historian, author and arts writer Robert Amos as the recipient of an Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts during our Fall Convocation ceremony. Amos has dedicated most of the past four decades to documenting — both journalistically and visually — Victoria’s visual arts scene. As Dr. Cedric Littlewood, Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, noted in his introduction, “By bringing people, buildings and neighbourhoods to life, Robert’s contributions to BC’s art history is the very fabric of Victoria’s history.”

Faculty research & creative activity

Faculty research and creative practice is always in the spotlight, and this year was no exception. Music professor Steven Capaldo’s brand-new piece specially composed the closing ceremonies of the Invictus Games in February. Performed live by the Royal Canadian Navy’s Naden Band and broadcast to viewers around the world, his “Invictus Fanfare” had its world premiere as the accompaniment to the sight of over 550 wounded warriors walking and wheeling into Vancouver’s Rogers Arena.

Speaking of Vancouver, Theatre professor Carmen Alatorre picked up her latest Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Costume Design for her work on Two Gentleman of Verona for Bard on the Beach.

After months of planning, rehearsals and preparation, September saw the launch of the Indigenous theatre festival Staging Our Voices. Presented by Theatre professor Kirsten Sadeghi-Yekta, the SSHRC-funded and artist-led festival supported the efforts of artists working to invigorate Indigenous languages through the medium of theatre. “We realized that a lot of Indigenous Artists feel isolated, specifically artists that are working with the language, and they would love to find ways to gather, to share food, to share stories and be in one space together,” says Sadeghi-Yekta.

Also in Theatre, professor Sasha Kovacs received a SSHRC Insight Development Grant for her Performance in the Pacific Northwest project, co-led by the University of Lethbridge’s Heather Davis-Fisch with contributions from project researchers Matthew Tomkinson, Laurel Green and Lee Cookson. This is in addition to her role as co-director of Gatherings: Archival and Oral Histories of Performance, a seven-year, $2.5 million SSHRC Partnership Grant she was awarded last year.

Music professor Kirk McNally, Visual Arts professor Kelly Richardson and Writing professor David Leach were all recipients of UVic’s annual REACH Awards, recognizing outstanding achievement by UVic teachers and researchers who are leading the way in dynamic learning and making a vital impact on campus, in the classroom and beyond.

Sean Holman — the Wayne Crookes Professor in Environmental & Climate Journalism with the Department of Writing — was announced in July as the leader of a new six-year, $2.5-million SSHRC partnership grant. From Catastrophe to Community: A People’s History of Climate Changewill train 500 post-secondary students and professional journalists to document the experience of 1,000 survivors around the world and share their wisdom. Holman was also honoured not only with the 2025 Bill Good Award at the annual Webster Awards for BC journalism in November, but his 2024 Climate Disaster Project verbatim theatre production Eyes of the Beast also just earned a Silver Award in the “Sustainability, Environment & Climate” Special Projects Awareness category of the Anthem Awards (presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences) in November.

Alumni acclaim

UVic’s 2025 Distinguished Alumni Awards were announced in March, and Fine Arts was thrilled to see four of our outstanding graduates being honoured across the categories: Presidents’ Alumni Award winners Cassandra Miller (School of Music) and Tania Willard (Visual Arts), Emerging Alumni Award winner Chari Arespacochaga (Theatre), and Indigenous Community Alumni Award winner Crystal Clark (Visual Arts).

It was a double-win for Tania Willard, however, when she was also announced as the recipient of the $100,000 Sobey Art Award in November. And our very recent Orion Lecturer — poet and UVic alumna Karen Solie — won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry for her latest collection Wellwater just days after her visit to campus. Kudos also go out to just-graduated Writing MFA Adrienne Wong, who was shortlisted for the $100,000 Siminovitch Prize in theatre.

Tania Willard

Locally, two Writing MFA alumni were in the headlines this fall: Kyeren Regher was named the latest City of Victoria Poet Laureate — the third Writing alum to hold that position — and Melanie Siebert won the inaugural DC Reid Poetry Prize at the City of Victoria book awards.