2025 Ambassadors
Meet the 2025 Ambassadors!
Explore this year’s Ambassador Events! Visit here to learn about the CARE (Community Arts Reimagining Equity & Wellness) Series.
Jacki Gunn
Jacki Gunn is an actor, improviser, and storyteller based in Burnaby Heights. Jacki has appeared on screen in shows such as Wild Cards (CBC), Lucky Hank (AMC), Woke (Hulu), and Tracker (CBS). She can be seen on stage around BC's comedy scene as a mainstage ensemble member at The Improv Centre and has performed with The Fictionals, Tightrope Theatre, and with Momentous Comedy at JFL Vancouver: Best of the West.
More recently, Jacki has begun developing original content for both stage and screen, with a focus on using her queer, neurodiverse perspective to craft nuanced and unconventional stories that emotionally validate those who feel deeply. In 2023, she wrote, co-directed, and produced Back to the Holidays, a record-breaking improvised holiday show at The Improv Centre. Currently, she is developing several writing projects, including a dark comedy short film, pilot, and feature scripts, with plans to produce her own work in the coming year.
Jacki’s Culture Days event: A Community of Yes: Fostering Collective Joy through Improv brought people together at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts to explore creativity, wellness, and community connection through a live improv show followed by an interactive workshop. Participants stepped out of their comfort zone, embraced spontaneity, and discovered the joy of creative expression and laughter in an inclusive space. With a focus on play, mindfulness, and personal growth, this event celebrated the power of community-driven creativity as a tool for reimagining wellness and equity.
Pronouns: She/they
Instagram: @jackigunn
Mentor: Nicolle Nattrass
Learn more about Nicolle
Nicolle Nattrass is grateful to live, work, and create on the unceded and ancestral territory of the Snaw’na’as First Nations people.
Her professional expertise includes 25+ years of experience working in the performing arts as a Jessie nominated theatre/film/tv actor (CAEA/UBCP/ACTRA), playwright (PGC), director and dramaturge as well as her work as a certified Addiction Counselor (CAC II).
She is a lifelong learner, a certified Cultivating Safe Spaces facilitator (2024), currently completing her training in Intimacy Coordination/Direction (2024-2026) and a sought after Mental Wellness Consultant.
In 2024, she joined Set Protect to create & facilitate a 2 part workshop series—“Take 5 for Actor Wellbeing”. She offers monthly (lunch & learn) Workplace Wellness & Resilience series and a series on Creative Journaling for Self-Care.
Holding space for artists, whether as a dramaturg, director or coach, is grounded in trauma-informed, heart centred and ethical practice. Helping others and offering tools for increased creative self care and mental wellness has been the key to her work as a coach and counselor, navigating difficult conversations and topics like trauma, anxiety, and substance misuse.
In 2021, Nicolle published her first book, “Just the Two of Us, A soft place for tender hearts to land” and is a featured author in the following:
You Are Not Alone, An Anthology of Perinatal Mental Health Stories
Transformational Journaling for Coaches, Therapists and Clients
The Great Book of Journaling, How Journal Writing Can Support a life of wellness.
The Coach’s Guide to Completing Creative Work
Pronouns: She/her
Lauren Aldred
Lauren’s primary relationship is with Creator, experienced through the Land; she enjoys this relationship through silence and listening, canoeing, snowshoeing, medicine gathering, walking, and in time will rejoin the earth with peace.
Her heritage is English and non-status plains Indigenous.
She lives on an acreage with two dogs, and six chickens. She is mother to four adults and grandmother to one little girl.
Lauren started writing poetry at fourteen months old when she dictated her first poem to her grandmother, about “red berries and mooses in the snow.” She has continued to write poetry throughout her life.
She began experimenting with acrylic flow in 2017, curious to what could be done with this art form. Acrylic flow is not laden with the burden of how it should be done and because of this encourages experimentation and play. As it moves, acrylic flow reveals the spiritual energy of the artist, plants, and the Land.
The Land where Lauren lives is incredibly beautiful, providing daily opportunities for breathtaking photography, if only with her iPhone 8.
She is an integrated person whose diverse aspects weave together art, poetry, and caring for others in her work as exhibitor, counsellor, facilitator/teacher, and worship leader. For her, art is a community endeavour and she loves to encourage others to play with paint and with words, finding ways to express the soul.
Lauren is profoundly grateful to live, work (and heal!) on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of Nak’azdli Whet’un north of Fort St. James.
Lauren’s Culture Days Event: Both connection with the Land and creative pursuits are inherently healing. In Autumn Inspired by Nature Creative Retreat, participants enjoyed a nature walk, then returned to the Pope Mountain Arts Centre to paint with acrylic flow and try creative writing with a guided nature theme.
Pronouns: She/her
Website: https://www.laurenaldred.ca/
Mentor: Celeste Nazeli Snowber
Learn more about Celeste
Celeste Nazeli Snowber, PhD is dancer, poet, writer, and award-winning educator who is a Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Her opus of multidisciplinary works has pioneered and instituted the importance of embodied forms of inquiry; the presence of the body within arts-based research, and its implications for writing, being, creating, teaching, and living. The essence of her performative work centres around site specific performance and complete one-woman-shows that integrate comedy, contemporary dance, and improvisation and how one lives a juicy life amidst complexities and wonder. Celeste’s publications include books, collections of poetry, as well as numerous chapters and articles in scholarly books and journals. Her books include, Embodied inquiry: Writing living and being through the body, three collections of poetry and her most recent book is Dance, poetics and place: Site-specific performance as a portal to knowing. Her last book of poetry, The marrow of longing explores her Armenian identity. Her forthcoming book of poetic meditations is called, Creating in dangerous times and will be coming out in June 2025 with HARP Press. She has performed and spoken internationally for concert venues, galleries, museums, conferences, and in various outdoor spaces. Celeste can be found at www.celestesnowber.com or more ideally, dancing between land and sea.
Pronouns: She/her
Ashleigh Giffen
Ashleigh Giffen is a 26 year old mixed Oji-Cree multi-disciplinary artist exploring fragmented histories, place, and futurisms. Her first play, Kamwatan Nipe (Quiet Water) held its first reading at the Arts Club Theatre company, followed by a silver commission and artist in residency at the Arts Club. Her work has been featured in Briarpatch Magazine, Canadian Arts and Stories, and she was the second place winner of Room Magazine poetry contest. Her stop motion film, Pesowan, created in collaboration with Maura Tamez, was featured in the Lake Country Art Gallery and was also featured at the Kelowna Art Gallery as well as her multimedia collage work. She currently lives in the territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) with her two kitties.
Ashleigh’s Culture Days Event: Teach Me About You was a storytelling workshop rooted in Indigenous storytelling and Talking Circle practices, open to anyone interested in exploring self-expression through writing, poetry, or spoken word. Participants were guided through gentle prompts and invited to share in a supportive, culturally grounded space that values connection, creativity, and personal truth. The event took place at the Gathering Place Community Centre with access to outdoor space, prioritizing accessibility and community engagement.
Pronouns: She/her
Instagram: @galaxiiee_
Mentor: Lisa Cooke Ravensbergen
Learn more about Lisa
Lisa Cooke Ravensbergen is a tawny mix of Ojibwe/Swampy Cree and English/Irish gratefully living as a guest on unceded Coast Salish lands. Lisa is a mother whose artistic and scholarly practice encompasses performance, direction, play-making and new sound works, curation and dramaturgy, writing, teaching and mentorship, consultation and anti-colonial interventions. An Associate Artist with Full Circle, she also serves as an artist-advisor to various local theatre companies. Her newest work, The Seventh Fire, an immersive audio performance inspired by ceremony, is currently touring.
Pronouns: She/her/ikwe
Lore Andrea
Lore Andrea is a Chilean actor, director, puppeteer, and prop/costumes builder, based in Victoria, B.C.
She is a graduate from Club de Teatro Fernando González Mardones in Santiago de Chile, and later on, her curiosity for physical theatre led her to train in Bouffon, Commedia dell'arte, Clown, Mask, Suzuki, Viewpoints, and different forms of puppetry. She spent two months at École Philippe Gaulier in France, and thanks to BC Arts Council grants, she traveled to Spain for a Mask, Clown, and Physical Theatre intensive.
In Chile, Lore worked mostly in commercials, and theatre for young audiences, touring nationally, and performing at several Chilean venues. In Victoria, she has collaborated widely with companies like Wonderheads, SNAFU, SKAM, Atomic Vaudeville, Impulse, Story Theatre, and some independent filmmakers. She also occasionally steps in as an instructor or coach for physical theatre artists. Lore’s directorial debut was with Gay4Nature’s Coffee Cantata, for which she also designed/built costumes and props.
Additionally, she has developed short object theatre pieces, under her artistic persona Plastik Chaskilla: Oscar Inside the Spiral, Pom Emesis, Seabath at midnight, Death Sweater, L’Art Hropode and Funerflies.
All of her hard work and passion led her to be the recipient of the 2023 Early Career Award (ProArts).
Lore's work has been impacted by her experience as an immigrant speaking her second language, as she has found herself thriving in a visual, movement-based theatre, emancipated from text. She strongly believes in playfulness, magic, and tenderness as a political way of living.
Lore’s Culture Days Event: In The Essence Mask: A Soul-Portrait Workshop at Theatre SKAM Studio, participants used recycled, found, and repurposed materials to create a theatrical mask that reflected their inner selves—the very essence of their hearts and souls.
Pronouns: She/her
Instagram: @ruloreto @plastikchaskilla
Mentor: Kate Braidwood
Learn more about Kate
Kate is a theatre maker, performer, director, mask maker, sound designer, teacher, and Co-Founding Artistic Director of WONDERHEADS Theatre, a physical theatre company specializing in full-face mask performance and wordless, visual storytelling.
Kate holds an MFA in Ensemble-Based Physical Theatre from Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theatre and a BFA in Acting from the University of Victoria. In 2009, she co-founded WONDERHEADS, and she is a lead contributor to the company’s devising process, as well as a principal performer and the company’s mask maker and sound designer. WONDERHEADS has created five original productions which have toured extensively to performing arts centres and festivals throughout North America, and the company has been honoured with multiple accolades including six Critics’ Choice Awards, twelve Best of Fest awards, and the Scion Motivate award for entrepreneurship in the creative arts. Kate was named a 2015 Oregon Arts Commission Fellow, and she is a featured artist in ‘Who’s the Puppet Now,’ a “collection of photographic portraits of the brightest lights in the world of puppetry, mask, and animated objects” by Xstine Cook and Sean Dennie.
Kate is based in Victoria, BC—the traditional and unceded territory of the Lekwungen speaking Peoples, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations
Pronouns: She/her
Amy Braun
Amy Braun is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, and performer based in Valemount, BC. As a heritage signer of PSE/ASL and a proud CODA (Child of Deaf Adults), Amy brings a unique perspective to her creative work, drawing from her lived experiences and deep connection to language and culture. Her performance project, HALF/ASIAN with Amy the CODA, blends music, storytelling, and visual expression, often incorporating themes of identity, accessibility, and belonging.
Amy’s career spans visual arts, music, videography, and theatre. She has toured extensively as a photographer, videographer, and performer, and has appeared at festivals including Vancouver Island MusicFest, Woodstove Festival, Ignite the Arts Festival, Cumberland Wild Music Festival, Valemountain Days, and Robson Valley Music Festival. She was the subject of AMI TV’s Mother Tongue documentary and has been featured in interviews on CBC Radio and Global News.
Her current project, Hallowed Be Thy, co-created with Miwa Hiroe and Ian Griffiths, is in development through the Sunset Theatre’s three-year Exploration Series Residency and set to debut in 2025.
Amy is passionate about building arts-based connections in rural communities. As a volunteer board member of the Valemount Arts and Cultural Society and the Robson Valley Music Society, she helps bring creative opportunities to her region. Through her work, Amy aims to foster equity, inclusion, and community wellness, using the arts as a vehicle for joy, healing, and transformation.
Amy’s Culture Days Event: Move & Be Moved invited participants of all experience levels to explore creative movement, learn original choreography from the their theatre production Hallowed Be Thy, and connect through dance. This workshop emphasized personal expression, community building, and the healing power of movement.
Pronouns: She/her
Instagram: @amythecoda
TikTok: @amythecoda
Mentor: Shara Gustafson
Learn more about Shara
Shara has resided in the Robson Valley in Dunster, B.C. for 31 years and has juggled the worlds of musician, homemaker, mother, and gardener for over 29 years. She has been performing and recording with bands for over 25 years. She has performed and toured with Linda McRae, Jack Garton, Rachelle Van Zanten, and Aurora Jane. She has performed with the local thespian group “Wishbone Theatre” and was part of 12 productions in the community. As the Artistic Director /Executive Producer for the Robson Valley Music Society since its inception in 2005, she is committed to bringing diverse and culturally rich experiences to her rurally isolated community. She is also a director on the board of the Dunster Fine Arts School Society and has organized concerts and fundraisers for many years to mutually benefit both non-profit societies. In her spare time, she enjoys growing food, hiking, canoeing, and above all, spending time with her grown kids, sweet little grandkids, and her dog that looks like a muppet.
Pronouns: She/her
Anna Bigland-Pritchard
Anna Bigland-Pritchard is a soprano and songwriter based in Lekwungen Territory (Victoria, B.C.). Whether on stage in opera and indie-folk performances, or leading mindfulness workshops, choral rehearsals, or empowering voice lessons, Anna honours music as a resonant tool for connection, wellness, and social change. Anna’s training includes a Bachelor of Music at Canadian Mennonite University, a Post-Baccalaureate Diploma in Performance from the University of Manitoba, studies in Expressive Arts Therapy, and mentorship with renowned soprano Nancy Argenta.
Recent art song, opera, musical theatre, and oratorio performance highlights include roles in Bach’s Coffee Cantata, Haydn’s The Creation, and Waitress, and recital performances of Debussy’s Ariettes oubliées. A member of the Pacific Opera Victoria Chorus, she also co-founded the indie opera project, Gay4Nature Collective, which explores classical music through a queer and ecological lens. G4N has produced a touring production of Bach’s Coffee Cantata, live performances for local arts festivals and ecological events, and the award-winning short film, Green. A community-builder and culture-maker, Anna co-hosts Victoria’s Classical Singer Open Mic events.
She has received major funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Victoria and has been invited to artistic residencies such as LEÑA, Penny Lou, and Studio H.
As an indie-folk songwriter, Anna combines field recordings, live vocal looping, and poetic lyricism, expressing her reverence for the natural world. She regularly collaborates with dancers and has recently performed with The Space Collective, and at Impulse Theatre’s Peek Fest and the City of Victoria’s Lights of Wonder.
Anna’s Culture Days Event: Creative Care for Eco-Anxiety: A Choral Collage Workshop was an expressive-arts-fuelled, eco-mindfulness choral soundscaping workshop. Through modalities such as drawing, writing, movement, and sound, participants explored and enhanced their relationship with the natural world, honoured their eco-anxiety, and felt more equipped to pursue taking steps in line with their own values to care for the earth. Together, participants created a musical soundscape of their collective vision, singing hope for a closer and restored relationship with the natural world into being.
Pronouns: She/they
Instagram: @itme.abp
Website: www.abpcreative.ca
Mentor: Jayne Walling
Learn more about Jayne
Jayne is a multi-disciplinary artist who recently returned to Vancouver Island after spending over a decade creating devised, multi-disciplinary theatre in Paris. She trained in clown at École Philippe Gaulier, where she also co-founded Dark Matter Theatre (Paris-London) and Compagnie des Wanderers (Paris-Berlin-Buenos Aires). Since returning to Canada, she has worked with Impulse Theatre, SNAFU, Puente Theatre and is part of the New Incubator Project at the Belfry Theatre with her solo show “Nana”. Jayne specializes in creating larger than life characters, putting female narratives at the centre, and walking the delicate line between tragedy and comedy.
Pronouns: She/her