Crafting Curatorial Statements with Am Johal

Join us for the first public workshop in Centre A’s 2026 Art Writing Mentorship program with Am Johal for a curatorial writing workshop on Saturday May 23rd, 2 – 3:30 pm, at Centre A. Spots are limited! Register here.

With a focus on crafting compelling curatorial statements, we'll look at examples of festival statements and engage in a writing exercise. Participants will examine effective curatorial writing while interrogating the balancing act between accessibility, theoretical rigour and the desire to build counter-publics. We will develop and refine our own curatorial statements, and gain practical strategies to articulate emergent ideas that convey social, political and aesthetic potency at different registers simultaneously.

Am Johal is Executive Artistic Director of the Indian Summer Festival. He previously was Director of SFU's Vancity Office of Community Engagement and Co-Director of SFU's Community Engaged Research Initiative. He has collaborated on four book length projects. He is Chair of the Vancouver International Film Festival and Vice Chair of Greenpeace Canada.

This workshop is a part of Centre A’s 2026 Art Writing program, generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, British Columbia Art Council, and the Government of BC. Centre A is also excited to collaborate with The Capilano Review in connecting writing with the arts.