Camyar Chai, Carmen Aguirre, Camilla Tibbs, and other arts names take board reins to rebuild PuSh International Performing Arts Festival
“The time for blame is over,” new board president says after AGM
The Fever, a high point of the PuSh Festival past. Photo by Waleed Shah
Carmen Aguirre and Camyar Chaichian
A TOTAL CHANGE-OVER of the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival board took place at the organization’s AGM on Sunday (March 7).
As covered by Stir last month, the organization’s board of directors had agreed to dissolve itself in the hopes new leadership would step in. Most agreed PuSh’s survival was at stake.
At the AGM, longtime Vancouver director, actor, writer, and nonprofit administrator Camyar Chaichian and the entire new slate of people he had recruited to help rebuild the organization were elected—one by one—to take the reins.
“I am feeling humbled but also extremely validated and optimistic,” Chaichian, who has been working months toward saving the festival, told Stir today. “Yes we’re in crisis and there’s still a lot of healing that needs to take place, but the time for blame should be over.”
The new board is a diverse cross-section of the local arts community: with Chaichian as president, it includes theatre artist, actor and writer Carmen Aguirre; dance artist Justine A. Chambers; performer, play-maker, dramaturge, director, writer, and teacher Lisa Cooke Ravensbergen; educator, curator, writer, and arts administrator Sadira Rodrigues; Rumble Theatre associate artistic producer Shanae Sodhi; Gateway Theatre executive director Camilla Tibbs; and interdisciplinary performer Johnny Wu. Rodrigues will serve as vice-president, and Tibbs will be secretary-treasurer.
“I’m very grateful and overwhelmed by the quality of team I was able to put together,” Chaichian told Stir today. “I think the strengths are we’re not only culturally diverse but also have a diversity in our work we’ve done within the arts sector.”
Following the meeting, PuSh managing director Jason Dubois shared, “As cultural workers, we are grateful to all of the volunteers who step forward to serve on the boards of arts organizations. The PuSh staff is especially excited to be working with this group of knowledgable and experienced artists and arts leaders during this transitional moment for PuSh.” Dubois also noted that following the AGM, staff and board met together to acknowledge the work ahead and to commit to moving forward together.
The group, originally set out as an interim team that would help the organization transition leadership after controversy mid-2020, has signed on for a full two-year term to give the nonprofit society a sense of stability, Chaichian said. One of the new board’s main stated objectives is the “transformation towards a responsible, equitable, and accountable organization”.
As previously reported in Stir, only five board directors had remained at PuSh after several resigned in the wake of controversy at the fest last spring. That’s when the organization cut the jobs of two high-ranking female staff members of colour (Joyce Rosario and Janelle Wong-Moon), sparking an outcry in the community. That was quickly followed by the board announcing that its recently installed artistic director Franco Boni was “no longer employed”, sparking a further backlash. An advisory committee of community members was working toward systemic change at the organization through the fall; in January, organizers cancelled a planned PuSh Rally symposium that grew out of that process, suggesting controversy at the fest was still a raw wound. PuSh ran a reduced program of streamed performances last month instead of a full festival.
Chaichian stresses there will be a full re-evaluation of whether immediate goals have been achieved within six months. As set out in the AGM report, those include: finalizing “a healthy and just resolution with Joyce Rosario and Janelle Wong-Moon”; implementing an interim artistic team “that can review and advance PuSh programming from a Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (JEDI) lens”; continuing an organizational review; and engaging in dialogue with the community for feedback along the way.
One month ago, Chaichian announced he would run as interim board president at PuSh and put out a call to the community for a full slate to run with him. Chaichian has stated strongly in the past that the interdisciplinary festival is an invaluable cultural asset to the city worth saving. “If we aspire to revenge and destruction rather than justice and transformation, there will be a wound on all of us that will never heal,” he wrote earlier this month in his challenge to the community.
“After my initial call we got overwhelmingly positive response from the community,” Chaichian told Stir today. “What it [the election] doesn’t reflect is the other groups of people from all across the community who couldn’t offer themselves up on the board at this time but offered to be advisors or a sounding board….What that tells me is it can be done and it’s something the community wants and is yearning for: this healing and transformation.
“It makes me feel the community is ready to move forward,” he added.
The new board released the following full statement of its objectives:
“PuSh is an important cultural asset. How the future of the organization is determined impacts a diverse array of artists, arts organizations, and audience members. Since the organizational challenges of PuSh became exposed in the public square, discussion surrounding the society has become a symbol that reverberates beyond PuSh to our general cultural practice, certainly in BC, if not all of Canada. So, it is even more crucial that the outcome – whether transformation or dissolution – is conducted with transparency, consultation, empathy, and grace.
“As a transitional Board, we see our responsibility as laying the ground for the roots of new and longer leadership to take hold. Our role is to help shape the transformation needed at PuSh to ensure that it remains relevant, connected, and sustainable for current and future communities and audiences. We will achieve this through practices of care, respect, and reciprocity, while recognizing the complex terrain from which we begin. We assemble as a collective of caregivers tending to this work in a spirit of generosity and a commitment to enact these as principles and values held by the organization into the future.”
Chaichian said the board is ready to start to work. "The six-month marker represents our desire to be a roll-up-your-sleeves, action-oriented board," he said.
