Day 2
Wed 14 October

Morning Star (Grand Hall), © Canadian Museum of History

Morning • Guided Tours

Program subject to change

9:30 AM – 12:00 PM

Guided Tours

Included in your pass are exclusive guided tours to some of Ottawa’s most renowned cultural institutions. Registration for the guided tours will be available online soon.

Please choose one of the following options:

  1. Canadian Museum of History & Canadian War Museum

  2. National Arts Centre & Korean Cultural Centre Canada (maximum 20 participants)

  3. Library and Archives Canada & Thunderhead Monument (maximum 14 participants)

  4. National Gallery of Canada

All tours depart from the Canadian Museum of History. Walking tours visiting venues other than the Canadian Museum of History will depart at 9:30 AM.

Conference registration will remain open until 12:00 PM at the Canadian Museum of History for participants who were unable to register the previous day.

Break

12:00 PM – 1:00 PM

Optional lunch break

Lunch is not included. Nearby restaurant recommendations:

  • Bobino Bagel (10% off upon presentation of delegate badge)

  • Happy Goat Coffee (Notre-Dame)

  • La P'tite Épicerie du Quartier

  • L'Ardoise

BREAK

1:00 PM – 1:30 PM

Tea and Coffee Break at the Canadian Museum of History

Afternoon: Values and Mission

PLENARY SESSIONS

FROM 1:30 PM

Welcome Speeches

Conference Chair Corinne Estrada 🇫🇷, Chief Information Officer, National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, alongside Lisa Walli 🇨🇦, Chief Experience Officer & Vice-President of Public Affairs, Advancement and Digital, Canadian Museum of History

KEYNOTE

The State of Public Trust and How to Communicate Culture in a Divided World

Liza Eliano 🇺🇸 and Travis Malone 🇺🇸, Directors, Brunswick Group US

  • Brunswick will field a proprietary research study in 2026 to establish a nationwide U.S. benchmark on public trust, credibility, and cultural value in a polarized era. Public trust has long been a quiet asset for museums, performing arts organizations, libraries, science centers, and parks. But the current environment — politicization of cultural programming, misinformation, generational value shifts, and economic strain — demands fresh evidence on how that trust is earned, lost, and restored. Brunswick’s study will illuminate what drives confidence and legitimacy, useful for arts organizations as well as the corporations and foundations that fund them. It will use qualitative and quantitative methodology with adults in the US.

    This session would deliver the takeaways from the research, with learnings for communicators across the sector of arts and culture on how they can use the tools of marketing and communication to retain and foster a high level of trust with their stakeholders. It would also draw on my professional experience of 30 plus years of communications in the arts and culture field. I would present the findings alongside a Director from our Insight division.

PANEL

Bridging Worlds

Chaired by András Szántó 🇺🇸, featuring Nathalie Bondil 🇫🇷, Director, Arab World Institute, Léuli Eshraghi 🇨🇦, Artist and Curator of Indigenous Practices, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and Lisa Tremblay-Goodyer 🇨🇦, Director General of Communications and Policy, Library and Archives Canada.

BREAK

Tea and Coffee Break

LEARNING FROM PRACTICE: SIMULTANEOUS SESSIONS

Each session is 1 hour long, featuring 2 case studies and live Q&A.

CASE STUDY SESSION 1

Building Trust through Human-Centred Branding

Reimagining a Museum: The Challenge of Branding Human Rights
by Riva Harrison 🇨🇦, Vice-President, Education and Public Affairs, Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and Ryan Hughes 🇨🇦, Chief Strategy Officer and Head of Client Success, Humanity

  • The Canadian Museum for Human Rights holds a unique place in the cultural world. As the first museum dedicated entirely to human rights, it was created to inspire people to reflect on the past, understand the present, and help build a better future. But that ambition raised an unusual challenge: how do you brand a museum devoted to an idea as vast and complex as human rights?

    When Humanity partnered with the museum to reposition its brand, the team quickly realized there was no playbook for communicating human rights to a broad public audience. The answer would not come from traditional branding alone — it would come from understanding how people actually think about the issue.

    Through a national behavioural research program — including psychoanalytic “Mind Model Labs,” population-scale surveys, and semiotic analysis — the team explored how Canadians process human rights. What emerged was a powerful insight: people move through a psychological journey from sympathy to empathy to empowerment before they are ready to engage or act. This insight reshaped the museum’s entire communication strategy.

    Rather than presenting human rights as a legal framework or abstract concept, the museum reframed its role as helping people move along that human journey — building empathy first and then empowering action.

    The result was a new brand platform rooted in a simple but powerful idea: human rights are not just principles to believe in — they are actions we take together.

    In this talk, Riva Harrison and Ryan Hughes will share the research, strategy, and creative thinking behind the transformation — and what cultural institutions can learn about building trust by deeply understanding their audiences.

Building Trust Through a Human-Centred Brand: How the Van Gogh Museum Connects Local and Global Audiences
by Corinne Jongh 🇳🇱, Head of Brand and Marketing, Van Gogh Museum

  • The Van Gogh Museum places a human story at the centre of its work. In this keynote, Corinne Jongh, Head of Brand & Marketing, explores how the brand positioning shapes the museum’s marketing, communication and digital strategy, while maintaining global reach and strengthening local focus.

    At the heart of the museum’s positioning is not only Vincent van Gogh’s artistic achievement, but also the personal story behind the painter: his struggles, relationships, inner world, ambitions, and challenges in life. These deeply human experiences remain strikingly relevant today, allowing audiences across generations and backgrounds to recognise themselves in his story and form personal connections with his work and life.

    This human-centred positioning is reflected in the museum’s exhibitions and public programming and forms the basis for its digital communication strategy.

    By focusing on relevance and connection, the museum creates content that resonates with audiences’ lives and interests. Content that the public recognises and can relate to. Thereby inviting them into meaningful and ongoing relationships with Vincent’s story and his work. From personalised email journeys to platform-specific storytelling across social channels, the museum blends creativity, data, and cultural insight to engage both local and international audiences.

    Through a carefully balanced mix of knowledge and storytelling, all marketing channels become spaces for inspiration, dialogue, and participation. By combining data, creativity, and human storytelling, the Van Gogh Museum demonstrates how cultural institutions can build trust and lasting connections in a rapidly changing world.

CASE STUDY SESSION 2

Bridging Worlds through Youth Engagement

Happy Place: Building Trust and Belonging Through Wellbeing at the Fitzwilliam Museum
by Becky Jefcoate 🇬🇧, Practitioner Research Associate, Fitzwilliam Museum

  • What if a museum could build trust not only through knowledge, but through care? Happy Place is an immersive wellbeing experiment co-created with young adults at the Fitzwilliam Museum. In a time of stress, speed, and social disconnection, the project asked: can a museum become a refuge—a place to spark joy, calm, and connection through sensory design, play, and co-creation?

    Prompted by rising mental health concerns among 16–25-year-olds, Happy Place sought to rebuild young people’s trust in cultural spaces by inviting them to co-create one. Across nine months of listening, dialogue, and design, we worked with 49 young adults as Creative Producers, exploring what wellbeing truly means for their generation—and how a museum might respond with empathy and authenticity. Together, we transformed a gallery into an overgrown “garden of the imagination,” complete with soothing soundscapes, scent, hammocks, origami, and cardboard trees—an experiment in slowing down and belonging.

    Visitors described the space as joyful, peaceful, and emotionally safe. Every participant reported that it lifted their mood and deepened their sense of connection—to themselves, others, and the museum. Happy Place demonstrated how cultural institutions can act as bridges between generations and communities—where creativity, care, and co-creation help to rebuild trust and nurture resilience.

    This session offers honest reflections, hopeful provocations, and practical takeaways on how museums can move from audience engagement to genuine relationship-building—creating “soft spaces” of trust, empathy, and wellbeing in a world that needs them more than ever.

    This process transformed not only a space, but relationships. By listening deeply and sharing creative agency, the museum built new trust with a generation often disconnected from cultural institutions. The result was profound: 100% of visitors reported improved mood and greater feelings of calm and community.

    Happy Place shows how rethinking values and purpose can help museums bridge worlds—between generations, disciplines, and emotional realities. It challenges us to lead with empathy, design for care, and rebuild trust through authentic connection.

Young Museum Goers, Young Museum Doers: How Students Become Active Contributors to Museum Life
by Guillemette Naessens 🇫🇷, Director of Communications, Museum of Fine Arts Lyon

  • For more than 10 years, the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon has developed ambitious programs and events for students and scholars. Students — future museum professionals and beyond: engineers, teachers, political science specialists, and future medical professionals — are not only welcomed and trained at the museum, but are also given the keys to the institution during spectacular events throughout the year.

    From security to communication, engagement, and entertainment, the museum becomes theirs.

    The result of this ongoing commitment to young audiences: 30% of our individual visitors are under 26, and the institution is recognized as a vibrant museum, open to all generations.

CASE STUDY SESSION 3

Building Trust through Values-Driven Fundraising

From Rocks to Relevance – How Trust in Science Begins at the Museum
by Melissa Santee 🇺🇸, Chief Philanthropy Officer, Cleveland Museum of Natural History

  • Coming soon.

Funding the Vision: Developing Finance for Art at the Intersection of Culture and Community
by Cat Burton 🇺🇸, Creative Director, Create Art Together, Creative Producer, Children's Museum of Pittsburgh

  • Cat Burton is a creative producer whose practice spans two interconnected worlds. As Creative Producer at the Children's Museum of Pittsburgh and founder of Create Art Together, she has spent years building relationships with artists, cultural institutions, and community organizations across Pittsburgh and beyond — including Pittsburgh International Airport, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership, and others.

    These two roles have run adjacent to one another, each informing and expanding the other. The network of trust and collaboration built across both efforts forms the foundation of how her work is made and funded. This case study explores how this relational infrastructure translates into a financing strategy — one built on grants, sponsorships, institutional partnerships, and creative co-production — and what other arts professionals can learn from it.

CASE STUDY SESSION 4

Building Trust in Peripheral Contexts

Culture in Motion: How Viscosa Cultural Factory Fosters Connection and Trust on a Baltic Island
by Ülle Puustusmaa 🇪🇪, Senior Consultant, Strategic and Service Design Lead, Project Manager, Viscosa Cultural Factory

  • This presentation explores how arts and culture organizations can operate as spaces of connection and social meaning in peripheral contexts, using the Viscosa Cultural Factory on the island of Hiiumaa, Estonia, as a distinctive case study.

    Viscosa Cultural Factory is located on a small Baltic island with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants, limited year-round access to diverse cultural experiences, and strong seasonal fluctuations driven by tourism. Emerging from a formerly closed industrial complex, the transformation of Viscosa into an open cultural and creative industries environment provides an opportunity to examine how mission-driven cultural institutions can take root in places where cultural infrastructure has historically been scarce and trust in closed communities towards external initiatives is fragile.

    The first focus, Mission & Universal Values, addresses how Viscosa positions art and culture as a shared space of connection. The organization’s mission emphazises participation, openness and dialogue, using culture as a bridge between local communities, visiting artists and wider cultural networks. In this context, building trust becomes a foundational cultural practice rather than a secondary outcome.

    The second focus, Engagement & Social Impact, examines how geo-location and an exceptionally diverse audience mix—local residents, schoolchildren, artists, tourists, cultural professionals, and public and philanthropic partners—actively shape the institution’s voice and communication strategies. Viscosa’s institutional narrative is balancing accessibility and artistic ambition, local identity and international exchange, community needs and cultural leadership.

    By analyzing how remoteness functions as both a constraint and a strategic advantage, the session demonstrates how cultural organizations can maintain balance between cultural, social, economic and tourism logics without losing symbolic capital. The Viscosa case offers transferable insights for arts organizations seeking sustainable, inclusive and socially grounded models beyond metropolitan centers.

Speaking Up at the Edge: How a Remote Arts Festival Builds Connection through Community Engagement
by Louisa Gordon 🇦🇺, Chief Executive Officer, The Unconformity

  • The Unconformity is a biennial contemporary arts festival based in Queenstown as well as year-round creative explorations on the remote west coast of Lutruwita/Tasmania. Shaped by a post-mining landscape, the organisation works at the intersection of art, community and place.

    Across 14 years and seven festivals under the same leadership, the organisation built a strong foundation based on experimentation, deep listening and responsiveness to place. This approach extended to communication. In a crowded media landscape, The Unconformity chose to speak sparingly - only when there was something meaningful to say. This created a clear and distinctive presence, but it also assumed a level of familiarity.

    As the organisation grew, this became a challenge. New audiences, local communities and stakeholders didn’t always have clear or consistent ways to connect with the work. In 2022 the organisation invested further in its digital capability, through the Creative Australia Digital Strategist-in-Residence program. A full audit of the organisation's digital capability led to a new digital strategy and communications plan. This laid important groundwork for future online programs, but the overall approach remained relatively restrained.

    In 2024, new leadership stepped in and delivered the 2025 festival during a period of organisational change. Communication needed to shift from being occasional and tightly controlled to something more consistent, open and engaged. The focus moved to showing up regularly, building relationships and making it easier for people to understand, question and take part in the work.

    This case study looks at how that shift was put into practice. Monthly Open Halls created a regular space for conversation, where community members could meet the team, ask questions and share ideas. Collaborations with local songwriters and students opened up new ways for people to get involved and brought the organisation into different creative networks. These face-to-face moments were supported by a more active digital approach, helping maintain visibility and connection between events.

    Together, these changes made communication a central part of how the organisation works - not just something that supports the program, but something that builds trust, relationships and shared ownership. This was especially important during leadership transition, when clarity and visibility mattered most.

    Early signs, including increased participation, broader engagement and community feedback, suggest a stronger and more connected relationship with audiences.

    This session shares what was learned from the 2025 festival and explorations. It shows that in regional contexts, communication needs to be consistent, visible and ongoing. It’s not enough to speak well - you also need to be visible. The experience of The Unconformity demonstrates that real impact comes from staying connected to place and people, especially during times of change.

Performance

5:30 PM – 6:00 PM

PLENARY SESSION IN THE THEATRE

Cloud Bodies

Allison Moore 🇨🇦, New Media Artist and Filmmaker, and Lucy Fandel 🇨🇦, Dancer

  • Allison Moore presents CLOUD BODIES, an immersive media performance that merges contemporary dance, real-time technologies, and digitally reconstructed landscapes. Originally developed in partnership with Montreal’s Society for Arts and Technology and presented in the Satosphere, the work has also been featured at international fulldome festivals. Moore will be introduced by the MUTEK Montreal Festival, a longstanding supporter in the project’s development.

    CLOUD BODIES combines choreography with generative visual environments through live volumetric capture. During the performance, dancer Lucy Fandel is tracked in real time by sensors that record her movement as geometric metadata. These data streams are processed live and reconstructed within an immersive environment projected across the dome. The dancer’s body becomes a shifting terrain, merging with vast point-cloud landscapes derived from photogrammetric scans of the forests where Moore grew up on Vancouver Island. As bodies and landscapes waltz across the dome, the topography of human movement morphs with the contours of the natural world, accompanied by an original score by Arthur Desmarteaux.

    In this talk, Moore will introduce the artistic concept and technical framework behind the performance, demonstrating how live volumetric capture can be used to create responsive, generative environments for immersive performance. She will also reflect on the collaborative development process, including residency research at the Society for Arts and Technology and partnerships with the MUTEK Montreal Festival.

    By playing with scale, perspective, and embodiment, CLOUD BODIES proposes the body as landscape—an interface where physical movement, environmental memory, and virtual space converge. The project invites audiences to reconsider how human presence can inhabit and transform digital worlds, suggesting new possibilities for performance in immersive media environments.

    The Cloud Bodies project benefited from the artwork creation program at the Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) and was performed at MUTEK25 in Montreal.

Generously supported by Baldwin Studio

Evening

6:30 PM – 9:00 PM

Cocktail Reception at the National Gallery of Canada

The gallery building itself is a work of art. Designed by renowned architect Moshe Safdie, the impressive modern glass and granite structure blends harmoniously into the cityscape. The evening includes guided tours of the permanent collection and a cocktail.

Address: 380 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1N 9N4

 

Canadian Museum of History
100 Laurier Street, Gatineau, Quebec, K1A 0M8