who we
are
Public Imagination Network is a group of leading artists and thinkers who are passionate about creative responses to issues of public governance and social justice.
SHARY
BOYLE
Shary Boyle is a lifelong visual artist, and recipient of the Gershon Iskowitz Prize, Hnatyshan Award, June Callwood Award for Volunteerism, an honorary doctorate from the Ontario College of Art and Design University, and represented Canada at the 2013 Venice Biennial. Her critically acclaimed solo exhibition Outside the Palace of Me was presented by the Museum of Arts and Design in NYC in 2024.
Image by Ted Belton.
LESLIE
TING
Leslie Ting is an artist who combines her practice as a classical musician with creative work in theatre, installation art, new media and experience stemming from her former career as a practicing optometrist. She loves thinking about the relationship between listening and seeing in life and performances. For her major interdisciplinary productions, Speculation and What Brings You In, Leslie has garnered multiple award nominations and support from major Canadian arts institutions.
Image by Melissa Sung.
KEVIN
LORING
Kevin is an Actor, Playwright, Director and the Artistic Director of Savage Society, a non-profit charity dedicated to producing Indigenous stories. Kevin is also the founding Artistic Director of Indigenous Theatre at the National Arts Centre of Canada.
Full Circle First Nations Performance. Image by Nadya Kwandibens.
EVALYN
PARRY
Evalyn Parry is a theatre creator and songwriter whose acclaimed live performances have toured extensively both nationally and internationally. Evalyn's innovative work weaves together elements of social and personal documentary, storytelling, poetry, sound, and song, exploring under-documented histories and themes of social justice, liberation and ecology.
Evalyn Parry in Gertrude & Alice. Image by Jeremy Mimnagh.
KEVIN A.
ORMSBY
Artistic Director of KasheDance, Curator of Programming at Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO), Kevin A. Ormsby was a nominee for the Johanna Metcalf Performing Arts Prize 2023 and finalist in 2021 and recipient of Canada Council for the Arts’ Victor Martyn Lynch – Staunton Award. His research and creative practice exist in constant interrogation and navigation of Caribbean and African Diasporic cultural practices towards methodologies geared to research, creation and presentation. At Intersections of Culturally Responsive Art, Space / Place Making and Communities.
SHANNON
LITZENBERGER
Shannon Litzenberger is an award-winning choreographer, director and embodiment facilitator. She creates sensory-rich multi-disciplinary performance experiences that animate our relationship to land, community and the forgotten wisdom of the body. Her imaginative collaborations connect art forms and communities, centring participatory experiences in artistic processes. Throughout her 25+ year career, her work has been presented across Canada and the US, in collaboration with many of Canada’s leading artists across disciplines.
Image by Jef Mallory.
GREG
FRANKSON
Greg Frankson is an educator, subject matter expert, activist, speaker, and award-winning literary artist and essayist. Prior to the pandemic, his practice centred on spoken word poetry written to illuminate issues related to social justice. Since then, Greg’s literary work has shifted to focus more explicitly on the importance of story as a tool of social change. His poetry and creative nonfiction explore how we can bring together stories across the sociocultural spectrum to come to a more inclusive, forward-looking, and empathetic definition of Canada.
DEVYANI
SALTZMAN
Devyani Saltzman is a Canadian writer, multidisciplinary curator and cultural programmer. In her institutional practice she is the incoming Director of Arts for the Barbican and was most recently Director of Public Programming at the Art Gallery of Ontario, North America’s fourth largest museum, where she worked with the programming team to shape the museum as a forum for discourse, reflecting all communities and the narratives of Torontonians.
