JUDITH MARCUSE, LL.D. (Hon.)
Founder and Co-Director, ICASC, Simon Fraser University
Founder and Artistic Producer, Judith Marcuse Projects
Senior Fellow, Ashoka International

Judith Marcuse, has worked in the arts for over five decades as a dancer, choreographer, director, producer, educator, consultant, writer and lecturer. Trained in dance in Canada, the US and in England, she performed for more than 20 years with Canadian and European companies, including with the repertory dance company she founded in 1980 which toured across Canada and abroad for 15 years.  She has created more than 100 touring dance/theatre/film works and produced six large-scale arts festivals. For the last 20 years, her internationally-recognized work has focused on community-engaged art for social change (ASC), including three 6-year projects with youth. She teaches, speaks and consults internationally.

In 2007, Marcuse founded the International Centre of Art for Social Change (ICASC). More recently, she has led a six-year study of ASC in Canada while also teaching undergraduate courses and establishing a two-year graduate program in the field. She is a recipient of major awards, including an honorary doctorate. In 2019, she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Network for Arts and Learning.

DR. LYNN FELS
Co-Director, ICASC, Simon Fraser University
Professor, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University
Lynn Fels is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her research interests are arts education, leadership, inquiry and learning through the arts, and performative writing. She was the Academic Editor of Educational Insights, an on-line journal that invites new ways of imagining education (See www.educationalinsights.ca). Her book, Exploring Curriculum: Performative Inquiry, Role Drama and Learning, co-authored with George Belliveau, was published by Pacific Educational Press in 2008.

DR. CELESTE SNOWBER, PH.D.
Co-Director, ICASC
Professor, Faculty of Education, Simon Fraser University
Dance Education/Arts-Based Educational Research
Celeste Snowber is a dancer, writer and educator, and a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. She has focused her teaching and mentorship in the area of embodiment, and arts-based inquiry; her most recent work has been exploring a poetics of the body through her essays, performance and poetry. She has written numerous pieces in journals and chapters in books in the areas of the arts, holistic education and curriculum studies and is the author of Embodied Prayer, now in its second edition.

TRACEY LEACOCK, PH.D., PMP
Project Manager
Tracey Leacock served as the Associate Dean for Academic Projects at the Technical University of BC during its start-up phase. She then joined Simon Fraser University as a faculty member in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology before transitioning to SFU’s Faculty of Education. Her work spans research in technology-mediated education; instructional design for online and face-to-face learning; teaching in university, workplace, and community settings; project management; technical writing; and emergency medical services. Tracey joined ICASC as Project Manager in 2013, at the start of the 6-year national ASC! Project and is now working with Judith Marcuse Projects’ / ICASC’s new initiatives – mentorships and hubs – to help the art for social change / community-engaged arts sector foster agency and resilience in Canadian communities.

KIM GILKER
Community Engagement and Program Manager
Uninvited settler on unceded First Nations’ lands, working-class (confused), feminist, proud granddaughter of labour activists in the Nelson/Slocan area of BC: Kim has activism bred in the bone. With over a decade in communications and community engagement, Kim began working at Judith Marcuse Projects organising and promoting art for social change work. Passionate about grassroots social and environmental justice activism, and the important role arts can play, it was a natural progression to then move on to coordinating and managing community engagement and programs for Judith Marcuse Projects (JMP)/ICASC and the ASC! research project (2013-2019), hosted at Simon Fraser University.