Engagement Producer

This open call is an invitation to practitioners based in the Greater Vancouver area, experienced in producing education and engagement programming in arts settings. The Engagement Producer will develop, coordinate, and deliver a programme designed to offer various angles for participation and learning to accompany the exhibition, accessible to diverse audiences in the Greater Vancouver area. This project’s exhibition component will be presented in Vancouver, British Columbia, through early autumn 2027, but the engagement programme can begin earlier (or continue later) if required. What is the project? The proliferation of Artificial Intelligence systems throughout our communities, workplaces, and private spaces are driving profound changes in culture, thought, labour, and our relationships with one another. Within territories throughout the imperial core, many of us are seeing these changes manifested through increasing job insecurity, displacement of vulnerable and precarious urban populations, and concerns around resource consumption. While acknowledging the urgency of the issues mentioned above, this project seeks to explore the cognitive, epistemological, socio-political, and colonial shifts that tech companies are driving by pushing to integrate AI and algorithmic dependence throughout our societies. This project invites artists to create a new body of artwork that questions and explores what is at stake for our species and our world amid accelerating shifts toward ever more digital futures. Themes this project could explore include: Machine learning as a new era of enclosure, and primitive accumulation; AI systems, their infrastructure and resource consumption as new forms and frontiers of colonialism; AI proliferation as a process narrowing and homogenising thought, language, and imagination; Machine learning and exaggeration or reinforcement of archival, historical, and cultural biases; Mass forgetting, de-skilling, and digital dependence; Undermining democracy and access to information; Erasure of traditional practices and crafts; erasure of marginal and minority languages and epistemologies; Speculative imaginaries of what fair, equitable AI and automation could look like if utilised to benefit humans and the environment; Speculative imaginaries of futures without AI; Using contemporary art to preserve/revive traditional and craft practices, marginalised/minoritised languages and epistemologies. The role As this project’s engagement producer, you will be responsible for developing an exciting education and engagement programme that supports project outcomes, enriches experiences of the exhibition, and supports’ partners’ needs and objectives. Your primary responsibilities will include: Develop relationships with meaningfully selected community partners; Co-develop the final exhibition concept alongside artists and the production team; Liaise with artists in order to develop programming that facilitates diverse forms of interaction with their work; Manage an engagement programme budget; source and allocate any required materials; Coordinate and deliver events including educational workshops, talks, and tours