2025: Year in Review
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.
