December 10, 2018

Welcome to our New Communications Manager, Laurie Buckley!

Join us in welcoming our one-woman department, Laurie Buckley as our new Communications Manager. She will be enhancing our profile, sharing stories, and letting you all know what we're doing here at ArtStarts!

Here are a few fun facts about Laurie: 

1. Three words to best describe you:

Silly, driven, hungry (yes, I could eat something right now…)

2. Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I am a Cree/Métis with mixed heritage guest born and raised on the traditional territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tseil-Waututh First Nations and am forever grateful to be a guest on these lands my whole life. When I graduated high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my newfound freedom so I registered to be a participant in Katimavik, a government-funded program where people 17-21 years of age traveled to three different locations across Canada to work and experience the country for eight months. Upon completion of this program, I knew Vancouver was my home and wanted to grow my career to enhance this city. I enrolled in the Marketing Communications program at BCIT and have been a marketing maven for various organizations for nearly a decade!

3. What is your role at ArtStarts? What do you do in your role?

I recently started my tenure at ArtStarts in November as their new Communications Manager with the goal to share ALL THE THINGS! As a strategic planner, I intend to understand the multi-faceted initiatives that ArtStarts does and find effective means of sharing this with our varied audience. Storytelling is one of my favourite means of communicating - who doesn’t love a good story? When you work among creative people, young people, passionate people, there is a lot to talk about and my goal is to compel new audiences to be part of our community at ArtStarts.

To keep it simple - ArtStarts does things, I let folks know!

4. Where did art start for you?

My father was a professional organist so I was surrounded by music growing up. In high-school, theatre and music were my main interests and by grade 12, I was enrolled in five different courses related to those subjects. At 16, I was a founding member of a youth improv group and since then have found myself involved in various arts non-profit organizations in some capacity. If I wasn’t performing I was planning events, if I wasn’t planning events I would be playing music or writing lyrics.

5. What would you most like to tell yourself at age 13?

If you can’t love yourself, how in the heck you gonna love somebody else! - no wait, RuPaul said that but the sentiment rings true to me. Self-acceptance is a journey and getting to a stage of fully loving yourself isn’t a lateral process. There will be dips, there will be days where you are challenged to be your own friend, but always remember that your value does not equate your appearance, it's not a number on a scale, nor is it a score on a test exam - it's your courage, your honesty, doing the right thing. Authenticity presides over fitting in with the crowd!

6. What is your favorite childhood memory?

Going to pow-wows! I loved the drumming and dancing, seeing the beautiful regalia, hearing the paddles rattle on dancers’ garments and the sounds of the jingle dresses, watching people prepare and smoke salmon… and of course, eating it! It was a multisensory experience that I still enjoy to this day and hope all people may experience this wonderful tradition of gathering and celebrating.

7. Anything else that you would like to share with us?

I am obsessed with my ginger cat, Russell and you can follow him on instagram - @russellmeow - seriously, follow him. He’s really cute!!

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