Incoming Directors
clockwise from top left: Carmel, Kat, Andrew, Nik
Today, in advance of our 13th annual festival and ~first~ digital edition, we’re announcing that both of our co-directors, Kat Shubaly and Andrew Patterson, will be stepping out of their roles this summer. Kat and Andrew have been involved with EVERYSEEKER/OBEY since 2012 and have acted as co-directors since 2016 (and they’ve been cousins for much, much longer!).
In facing this transition, we’ve held many internal discussions as an organization about successors and best hiring practices. With our limited budget and institutional memory/capacity in mind, we wanted a chance to facilitate a long-term mentorship period and overlap with people who had experienced and contributed to the organization in the past and will be invested in the futures of EVERYSEEKER.
Therefore, we made the decision (that we feel is right for the organization) to hire internally. Two of our current board members, Nik A Basset and Carmel Farahbakhsh, will be stepping into co-director roles. For those of you unfamiliar with the Nik and Carmel, here’s a little more about them:
Carmel (they/ them) is a sextuplet Leo, community worker/ educator, experimental violinist, queerdo and arts maker. They have collaborated on The Khyber Centre For The Arts board for three years, and have been working alongside Everyseeker informally for the past two years and formally as a board member for the past year. Carmel aims to weave their passions of innovative and magical sound arts and trauma informed education and procedural based work to these creative spaces. They recently transitioned from a five year term coordinating South House Sexual and Gender Resource Centre to working as the support services coordinator at the Youth Project, they also enjoy their work as a sex educator at Venus Envy-- seeing a direct link between this community work and access to creative spaces/ arts community. Carmel is passionate about contributing to building a sustainable bridge and relationship between the artistic sector and anti-oppressive organizing in Halifax. Carmel actively collaborates with local initiatives with the aim to create wider 2SQTBIPOC support systems locally.
Nik (they/them) is a cancerian (read: tender) transmasculine cowboy-adjacent music organizer, creative writer, and community educator. They grew up in a country bar in the North End of Winnipeg, MB and moved to Halifax in 2018 after completing their masters at the University of Windsor in Southern Ontario. They are passionate about creating and carving out space for under-represented artists and musicians with Everyseeker Convention, Polaris Prize, various community radio stations, and (now dissolved) not your boys club, educating and learning from the queer and trans youth they support in their other employment at the Youth Project, and using creative writing as an outlet to share what they know and experience in the form of zines, journal articles, poetry, and blogging. Their role with Everyseeker began in December 2018 as a member of the programming committee, and later, in March 2019 as the Secretary on the Board of Directors.
Nik and Carmel have been shadowing Kat and Andrew for the past four months as a way to best understand how the wonderful and wild creature that is EVERYSEEKER operates. Following the Emergent Strategy festival in May/June, the four directors will work collectively until September to ensure the smoothest transition possible. Up to this point, Nik and Carmel have assisted in co-facilitation of community feedback sessions with Kate MacDonald, worked with Nivie Singh on their BIPOC community engagement project, contributed to policy framework creation, revisioning of “OBEY” festival, created a care intake/ access needs form for travelling artists, coordinated programming committee, and assisted in grant writing and light financial tasks.
Nik and Carmel are forever inspired by the possibilities and luminous futures of this expansive festival. They are deeply in love with all the weirdo sonic deliciousness and sound freaks that EVERYSEEKER draws as well as the brilliance that they have yet to witness. They hold full hearts for the community-based elements of this festival and are thrilled to continue this tradition in the realms of integrating other artistic genres to the festival, creating more space for community-lead projects and educational elements, and carving further space for intergenerational perspective. Nik and Carmel are excited by EVERYEEKER’s commitments to centre and prioritize talent at the margins and look forward to humbly pursuing this goal and nurturing new relationships with emergent artists, cultivating relationships with community leaders, and establishing care and building trust within the artistic sector locally and abroad.
Nik and Carmel have a lot of big dreams and wishes for the future of Everyseeker but wanted to mention a few that they are exceptionally ecstatic about. This highlight reel includes: working to unlock further funding for additional capacity building, completion of trauma-informed care-based anti-oppressive policies and modes of operation to set an example/standard in the industry, bridging gaps within the arts across disciplines, listening to and consulting with community to ensure we are curating events and workshops guided by the voice of our audiences and relevant to their interests, further mentorship opportunities, and deeper curatorial involvement from community organizations that we admire and look up to. We are so honoured to be working alongside you in nurturing this very special festival. If you have immediate questions, thoughts, concerns, feedback -- please contact: board@everyseeker.com