"Just Give Us Good Art": Five Questions For REVOLUTION Panel Moderator Dani Fecko

Dani Fecko is an agent, producer and consultant, who runs Fascinator Management

The BC Alliance for Arts + Culture's annual conference, REVOLUTION: Engaging Human Creativity, features exciting breakout sessions to engage and inspire. Among these sessions is the panel New Ways of Working Together: The Next Generation, where attendees will discover the fresh ways four successful young artists and arts administrators approach their work. 

Agent, producer and consultant Dani Fecko (Fascinator Management) moderates the panel, which features fundraiser Kristin Cheung; Sophia Wolfe, who cofounded F-O-R-M, the international festival of recorded movement; and Hong Kong Exile co-founder Natalie Tin Yin Gan

Fecko took time off her busy schedule managing eight internationally touring B.C. artists and arts organizations (including Company 605, Theatre Replacement, and Neworld Theatre), to answer some questions about the panel.

Nancy Lanthier (director of communications, BC Alliance for Arts + Culture): What most inspires you about the members of your panel?

Dani Fecko: These are some fierce ladies who have committed to inclusivity, to collaboration and to raising those around them up. It's a privilege to work alongside them. 

N.L.: What do you hope participants learn from your panel? 

D.F.: That there are some really rad things happening in Vancouver. That there is power in collaboration and cooperation. The ladies are uniting and getting shit done. 

N.L.: How does your panel reflect the theme of our conference REVOLUTION: Engaging Human Creativity?

D.F.: This is a group of women that is reaching out beyond genres and the sector to investigate how arts and culture are already integrated into society. They are at once making it happen and also bringing attention to all of the places that it is already happening. 

N.L.: What can millennials teach other generations about creativity or the power of the arts?

D.F.: Honestly, I can’t say. What I can say is, I think that we all need to be willing to make space to hear each other, learn from each other and grow stronger together. Millennials like arts just as much as boomers or Gen-Xers. 

N.L.: What’s one of your best tricks for building an audience?

D.F.: Make and present good art.

N.L.: Sure enough. But beyond making and pressing good art — what’s your trick for building audiences?

“Audiences are best built by having their intellects respected.”

D.F. : I would say that audiences are best built by having their creativity and intellect respected. They want to understand what they are agreeing to when they are purchasing a ticket, but have their breath taken away.

N.L.: Even this answer reiterates that content comes first. It’s the honest answer. As a manager, fundraiser or any kind of arts administrator, the art needs to speak for itself before any kind of marketing or promotional tricks can work.

D.F.: So true. I suppose it's catty but I think that us millennials are looked at as these strange creatures, who need to be internetted at all times. But when you are at shows, I promise that a boomer's phone will go off in an Arts Club show before a millennials' phone will go off at an opening or a comedy night or whatever. Just give us good art.

REVOLUTION: Engaging Human Creativity takes place at Pyatt Hall at the VSO School of Music and The Annex on June 8. For more information, and to register today, click here.