Toronto host
Mar Reyes
@designbymar
Melanie Egan
– Hosted at Design Exchange
About the speaker
Melanie Egan is a senior arts administrator with over 30 years of experience in the field of craft and design, with extensive experience in creative facilitation, curation and management. She is Director of Craft & Design at Harbourfront Centre and runs Canada’s foremost artist-in-residence programme devoted to ceramics, glass, textiles, metal and design.
In 2009 she conceived, spearheaded and secured funding through Canadian Heritage - Cultural Spaces matching grant, for a one million dollar expansion of the Craft Studio; to include a new Design Studio and name change; project fully realized in 2014. In 2006 she secured annual funding for the Craft & Design Studio through Canadian Heritage: Canadian Arts Training Fund.
Most recently in her role at Harbourfront Centre was the co-producing partner for the inaugural Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto. She edited Crafting New Traditions: Canadian Innovators and Influences - published by the Canadian History Museum and curated numerous solo and group exhibitions including: STUFF: Ingenuity and Critique – Contemporary Danish craft and design as part of Harbourfront Centre’s memorable SUPERDANISH Festival.
She is active on Craft Ontario committees; (Editorial and Nominations); is on the Programme Advisory Committees at Sheridan College: Craft & Design; George Brown College and OCAD University. She was a founding board director for SKETCH - Working Arts for Street-involved and Homeless Youth; former Board Trustee at the Textile Museum of Canada and sits on their Program Committee and a member of the Advisory Board for the Toronto Arts Council -Visual/Media Arts.
Melanie Egan was co-founder and artistic director for the Toronto International Jewellery Festival and a member of the curatorial collective OBJECToronto (2006-2009). She co-chaired the major international conference Meta-Mosaic SNAG 2013 [Society of North American Goldsmiths] and has been part of the curatorial partnership, McClure & Egan for over ten years.
Local partners
Venue Partner - Design Exchange
Design Exchange, is Canada’s only museum dedicated exclusively to the pursuit of design excellence and preservation of design heritage. At the crossroads of multiple disciplines, from furniture and architecture to graphics and fashion, our exhibitions, talks, workshops, and youth education programs are curated to reflect the popular zeitgeist and contemporary culture while demonstrating the relevance and importance of design to everyday life. They are committed to delivering accessible design experiences and education and aim to provide the tools necessary to connect design learning to the ordinary and extraordinary.
Community Partner - BrainStation
BrainStation is a global leader in digital skills training. Working with instructors from the most innovative companies, we’ve trained over 50,000 professionals and some of the largest corporations in the world.
Community Partner - Ada Support
Ada is the leading provider of AI customer support chatbots, automating millions of conversations per month for clients such as Telus, Upwork and Shopify. Ada provides a simple yet powerful authoring environment that lets clients use cutting-edge machine learning to quickly deploy a highly-trained virtual agent—without a single line of code. By reducing touch points through Ada’s automation, clients dramatically reduce costs, increase support team productivity and, most importantly, improve the overall customer experience.
Community Partner - Designlines
Designlines is Toronto’s Ultimate Guide to Design. Published four times per year, each issue provides reviews of top design stores along with stylish restaurants, new architectural projects and cutting-edge art galleries. Our Toronto Design Tour de Force, Best New Homes & Condos and Modern Renos issues are packed with modern-living ideas for urban dwellers kitting out their condos or houses designed by some of the best local architects. We also spotlight the city’s rising design talents as well as best new products and where to find them. And each spring we publish The Annual Shopping Guide, an issue devoted to exploring T.O.’s eight-plus design districts. This walking guide points out the hottest places to shop, eat and drink in each neighbourhood.
