Holly Schmidt (Canadian, b. 1976) is an artist, curator and educator engaging in embodied research, collaboration and informal pedagogy. She creates site-specific public projects that lead to experiments with materials in her studio. As the core of her work, Schmidt explores the multiplicity of human relations with the natural world. During her residency with the Belkin’s Outdoor Art Program, Schmidt has utilized spaces between campus buildings through a process of collective knowledge production. These artistic and ecological interventions foster relationships with plants in a manner that is both distinct from the formal, university landscape design as well as from standard notions of gallery space. Schmidt has been involved in exhibitions, projects and residencies at the Belkin Outdoor Art Program; the Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver; AKA Gallery, Saskatoon; Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver; the Santa Fe Art Institute; Burnaby Art Gallery; and Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, Vancouver.

Bopha Chhay is a Vancouver-based writer, editor and curator. Over the past decade, she has worked extensively to address various historical, social and intellectual conditions informing the interplay of visual art and language-based art practices in the region. Chhay’s intersectional approach to writing and publishing on contemporary art thus strives to deepen an examination of the social contexts of visual art production. Her curatorial research and writing interests are notably guided by transnational and diasporic histories. Chhay has held positions at Artspeak Gallery, Charles H. Scott Gallery at Emily Carr University, 221A Artist Run Centre, Enjoy Contemporary Art Space, an artist-run centre in Wellington, New Zealand and Afterall, a research centre at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. Chhay holds an MA in art history from the University of Auckland.

Barbara Cole is the Curator of Outdoor Art at the Belkin. Cole oversees the University’s Outdoor Art collection, commissioning new projects in public space and stewarding the existing artworks sited across the Vancouver campus. For over three decades, she has been actively involved in the field of public art working as an artist, curator, educator and consultant. In 2005 she founded Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, a collective of artists, architects and curators presenting temporary projects in public space and continues today as part of the production team. Cole is also the principal of Cole Projects, a public art consulting firm that promotes experimental approaches to public art planning and commissioning. She has led workshops, lectured widely and published articles on the subject of art in public space. Cole taught at Emily Carr University from 1984 to 1999 and worked as a consultant to the City of Vancouver’s Public Art Program from 1999 to 2004. In 2011, Cole received the Mayor’s Award for her contributions to the advancement of public art in Vancouver and in 2013, was a curatorial resident at ZK/U Center for Art + Urbanistics in Berlin, Germany.

Sheryda Warrener is a poet, editor and teacher, and most recently the author of Test Piece (Coach House Books, 2022) and Floating is Everything (Nightwood, 2015). Her work can be found in literary journals across North America, and has been selected for Best Canadian Poetry, The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry and the CBC Poetry Prize longlist. A recipient of the Puritan’s Thomas Morton Memorial Prize for poetry and the 2020/21 Killam Teaching Prize, she teaches poetry and interdisciplinary forms in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia.