Pamela Grundy | SAM Board Director
Pamela Grundy is an arts and culture worker with a career spanning decades, provinces, and disciplines – including as a dancer, director, curator, fundraiser, and consultant. She was for 30 years an artist with the legendary Danny Grossman Dance Company including many years as Co-Artistic Director. She is a graduate of the Museum Management and Curatorship program at Fleming College and spent six years at Dance Collection Danse— Canada’s national museum, archives and research centre devoted to dance—establishing their annual fund program and curating both live and online exhibitions. These days she’s involved with Company of Angels, Festival of Dance Annapolis Royal, Annapolis Heritage Society, AND she’s also one of our expert SAM consultants!
How did you come to be connected with SAM?
My connection to SAM came through my exposure to Barbara Richmond, one of the founders of SAM and Jane Marsland, an Arts Consultant based in Toronto, with whom I worked for many years in the Danny Grossman Dance Company. My experience of working through a strategic plan for the Grossman Company in the mid-1990s and facilitated by Arts Action Research, forever altered my perspectives on organizational change. Since moving to Nova Scotia in 2017, after 26 years of being a summer resident of the province, the time was ripe for me to help other artists and arts organizations make positive change.
What has been your favourite arts/culture experience?
I have so many significant arts and culture experiences that it’s impossible to pinpoint my favourite but off the top of my head I would say: touring as a working dance artist and playing small towns in Canada to international capitals of countries around the world; before age 10, having the opportunity to visit the National Gallery in Ottawa, the Smithsonian in DC as well as countless small museums and eccentric roadside attractions while on family camping trips; hearing the stories told by dance artists that came before me.
What is your favourite SAM memory?
The distant memory of meeting face to face with my fellow board members.
Why do you feel the arts are important to society?
The arts fit alongside all other professions but we have the potential, particularly in the performing arts, to engineer a collective experience that audience members may carry for their lifetime. I cherish art experiences that make me forget about my own training and perspectives while completely sweeping me into another world.
Can you share something you’ve learned from/about SAM?
I was fortunate to be part of SAM’s 2020/21 Mentorship Program as a mentor in fundraising and a mentee in Strategic Planning. This was a golden opportunity for me to learn from the program leaders, liaise with other consultants, and deepen my own skills while assisting local arts organizations.
Do you have any arts and/or culture projects on the go right now?
For my latest leadership challenge, I have stepped in as Seasonal Curator at the Annapolis Heritage Society. AHS owns and operates the O’Dell House Museum and Sinclair Inn Museum in Annapolis Royal. Summer will be busy as I also will wear my hat as Artistic Advisor and volunteer for the Festival of Dance Annapolis Royal, on this year from August 16-21. So come to the valley for the dance festival and while you’re there, stop into the museums!
What are your hopes for SAM’s future?
That SAM becomes known by diverse, young creative artists as the “go-to” place for help in negotiating the management and administrative side of their passion.
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