Photo courtesy of Island Mountain Arts official website (Julie Fowler) and Bulkley Valley Concert Association Facebook page

Julie Fowler is the Executive Director of Island Mountain Arts, a collective in Wells, BC that stimulates and enhances artistic, cultural and economic development by striving for excellence in the arts through workshops, seminars, exhibitions and the ArtsWells Festival.

Working with an organization such as Island Mountain Arts for eighteen years, Julie remained excited about artistic expressions and always has the artists' best interests at heart (including safe environments, decent exposure and fair pay).

In her last year as Executive Director of Island Mountain Arts, Fowler has had to re-imagine the IMA's season-ending event called the Northern Exposure Conference. Typically the NEC is an in-person conference that takes place in Wells over 3 days and this year it is all virtual.

In Smithers, the Bulkley Valley Concert Association's Artistic Director Miriam Colvin has been faced with the same challenge. At the beginning of COVID, the Concert Association asked their audience if they wanted to engage in virtual workshops and concerts and the response was "no". With that information, Colvin and the Concert Association board did something that's pretty rare: they listened and they worked to facilitate in-person events.

How did they pull this off? Tune in to CICK News on Tuesday, October 6th to hear from Miriam and Julie.