In 2020, the National Arts and Culture Impact survey revealed that artists and arts workers living under the state of Canada have experienced burnout en masse. 62% of arts and culture workers reported experiencing burnout or stress that fall. What conditions, both historically and in a pandemic-era Vancouver, have created experiences of burnout in the arts? Six arts and culture leaders (Demi London, Jenna Reid, Kenji Maeda, Manuel Axel Strain, Matthew Hyland, Vanessa Kwan) provide a window into ways in which arts and culture workers support the sector through undocumented in-kind contributions including unpaid labour, access to resources, cultural knowledge or communities, and personal experiences that are not compensated or unacknowledged but essential to the work they do.
For this response, Luca Cara Seccafien worked with Afuwa.
In 2020, the National Arts and Culture Impact survey revealed that artists and arts workers living under the state of Canada have experienced burnout en masse. 62% of arts and culture workers reported experiencing burnout or stress that fall. What conditions, both historically and in a pandemic-era Vancouver, have created experiences of burnout in the arts? Six arts and culture leaders (Demi London, Jenna Reid, Kenji Maeda, Manuel Axel Strain, Matthew Hyland, Vanessa Kwan) provide a window into ways in which arts and culture workers support the sector through undocumented in-kind contributions including unpaid labour, access to resources, cultural knowledge or communities, and personal experiences that are not compensated or unacknowledged but essential to the work they do.
For this response, Luca Cara Seccafien worked with Afuwa.
Luca Cara Seccafien has worked in fundraising, operations and production capacities in the arts for 12 years, mainly existing on the stolen ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh and səlilwətaɬ people as well as Treaty 6: ancestral territories and homelands of Métis, Dene Suliné, Nehiyaw (Cree), Nakota Sioux, and Anishinaabe (Saulteaux) and Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) people. Luca is the current Head of Advancement at 221A Artist-Run Centre. They employ a relationship-centered approach to development in service of resource sharing, mutual aid and wealth redistribution favouring systemic and cultural change. They’ve had the honour of mentoring under or working alongside veteran artists and activists at equity-based and community arts organizations including: Powell Street Festival, Pride in Art, Gallery Gachet, Heart of the City Festival, The Works Art & Design Festival, and beyond. Luca co-founded a collectively operated community art space called WePress, where they strived towards bringing barrier-free print-based art activities to communities that lack meaningful access to technical art forms due to systemic oppression. Luca is also a printmaking instructor with the Anvil Centre and Burnaby Art Gallery. They graduated from the University of Alberta with a BFA specializing in printmaking (2013). Luca is currently working on a graphic novel about millennial queer friendship during the end times.
The 2022 WEDGE Residency, a collaboration between CAG and Ground Floor, supported five early-emerging artists and cultural practitioners as they each explored a research question of their devising, related to the artistic, social or cultural history (and/or future) of “Vancouver.” In their self-directed residencies, the WEDGE residents each worked directly with a mentor to enrich their projects with intergenerational dialogue and exchange.
