One Saturday in 2022, Yael Wand was at the farmerâs market in Ganges and came upon a group of high school students playing music. As a musician herself, Yael knows good music when she hears it, and she thought the band, 19 Strings, was so good that she booked them as an opening act for the annual Summer Concert Series she had created in her role as executive director of Salt Spring Arts. This opportunity âopened a whole bunch of doorsâ for the young musicians, Yael says.
âSupporting people who have that creative thing and want to bring it forwardâ is one of the things Yael has loved about her job with Salt Spring Arts. She explains, âWe work to make sure this is a great place for artists to live. We work to make sure that community members can access the arts, that thereâs great events and opportunities to participate in, and a big focus is on reaching young people and inspiring creativity.â
As you may have heard, after 10 years of making her mark on Salt Spring Arts and the islandâs arts community, including the past five as executive director, Yael is stepping down. This past Tuesday was her last day on the job. She says she is leaving because she wants to spend more time with her children, who will only be at home a few more years, and because she needs a break.
âHaving been with the organization for 10 years, Iâve given a lot, Iâve put my passion behind things, and I saw it was time for somebody else to come in with new ideas,â explains Yael, who spent time this month onboarding her successor as executive director, Jennifer Van de Pol. âI got very tired and to the place in my life where Iâm ready to take on new challenges, but I donât know exactly what those are.â She says she plans to take a few months to figure out what she wants to do next.
Yael says itâs hard giving up what was in many ways a dream job, but she is glad that she is leaving Salt Spring Arts âin a very strong place.â
During her time with Salt Spring Arts, Yael says the organization has transformed. The budget has doubled ($700,000 last year), the staff has grown from 1.5 to 3.5 positions, and every system that is invisible to the public has been transformed, including a rebuilding of the organizationâs âdigital backbone.â Along with popular new offerings such as the Summer Concert Series, Yael says older programs such as ArtCraft and Artist in the Class have grown stronger, the Spring Art Show has broadened the kinds of disciplines showcased, and the organization regularly pays honorariums to artists.
During COVID, despite challenges around uncertain funding and constantly shifting restrictions on programming, Salt Spring Arts was able to make some of these digital improvements as well as shift the delivery of programs, some of which have carried on post-pandemic. âAt the end of COVID, we came out a lot stronger,â Yael says.
Founded in 1968 as the Gulf Islands Community Arts Council, the organization was renamed the Salt Spring Arts Council when the other islands in 2006 branched off to form their own arts council. In 2021, Yael decided to shorten the name to Salt Spring Arts because âCouncil has a pretty stuffy feeling to it; we wanted the name to feel more inclusive and approachable.â
Yael has also worked the past couple years on the implementation of a five-year strategic plan for Salt Spring Arts that went into effect in 2023. The board-led development of the organizationâs first strategic plan took into account a community survey and interviews that showed an appreciation for the quality and accessibility of its programs, but also a lack of awareness about the breadth of what the organization does, such as giving out artist grants and working in the schools.
According to Yael, a lot of progress has been made during the first two years of the strategic plan on helping the public better understand the organizationâs breadth of programs and its mission to strengthen the cultural capacity of the community breadth of programming as well as on less-visible things such as governance and âhow we work together as an organization.â After setting these more foundational pieces, Salt Spring Arts will tackle more visible parts of the strategic plan such as a review and evaluation of the organizationâs programs. âThatâs where someone else can bring new, fresh ideas,â Yael explains.
Yael, who grew up in Vancouver and often visited SSI to camp with her family at Ruckle Park, has been working in nonprofit arts for 25 years. She was among several co-founders of the ArtsWells festival in 2004, where she served as a volunteer on the production team for 10 years. She is also a singer-songwriter (her latest album âSaltwater Heartwoodâ came out in 2021 and is excellent). Being a musician who knows the creative side as well as the business manager side has been an asset to her work as an arts administrator.
âI know what it's like being on the receiving end as an artist for someone to have faith in meâpeople who said yes when I asked to do a show, or getting a grant or nomination. That kind of nod from the community is so powerful for artists. So when I can witness that happening, thatâs amazing.â
When Yael moved from central BC to SSI in 2014, she applied for a job as grants writer for Salt Springs Arts. Although she didnât get the job, she was offered a six-month part-time contract for communications and planning work. That contract eventually turned into a staff position, and in 2019 she became the organizationâs first executive director.
In her first year in that position, she launched the popular annual Summer Concert Series in Centennial Park, featuring a local opening act and a headliner. She describes how itâs been a win-win, taking advantage of community assets and bolstering local talent.
âWeâve got a beautiful setting in Centennial Park with the harbour behind itâwe forget how gorgeous that is. Weâve got that gazeboâitâs old but it works; itâs a great place to watch music. Weâve got that great berm that people can sit around in this pseudo-natural amphitheatre,â Yael says. âThere is an untapped need for it in the community. People love an opportunity to come together and dance. We have gorgeous weather in the summer. There are visitors in town looking for things to do. We purposefully scheduled it during the week so weâre staying away from the busy market. Itâs good for businesses downtown; people are buying their dinner and spending longer in town. And itâs great for artists who want to come here because itâs a difficult place to tour because of the cost, and for artists who are from here, what a fun opportunity to play in front of 400-700 people.â
She cherishes the many moments at these concerts when there has been âspontaneous dancing and the air is full of joy.â Thatâs because much of what she and the organization does is invisible to the public, putting all the pieces together behind the scenes. âMost of my time is spent at my desk at a computer, and then when the event comesâthe opening, the concert, the catalogue, the muralsâsuddenly you see the thing youâve been talking about, writing about, and dreaming about actually come to fruition, and even better when thereâs a group of people there to witness it.â
Other unforgettable examples of this for Yael during her time at Salt Spring Arts include:
* Taking Susan Benson on a studio tour of artists funded through the Susan Benson Fund for Visual Artists.
* A walking tour with 70 participants to meet the artists and see the three murals installed in Ganges in 2022 through a partnership with the Salt Spring Chamber of Commerce.
* Six Southern Gulf Islands artists traveling in 2023 to exhibit their art at the San Juan Islands Museum of Art for the final instalment of the cross-border collaboration: âArchipelagoâContemporary Art of the Salish Sea.â
* The âheart-shakingâ opening in 2022 of JSIṈSET†SÌW̱ELOâE (Family Growing Ourselves Up), an ArtCraft showcase exhibition of WSĂNEÄ artists.
When I ask Yael about her legacy with Salt Spring Arts, she emphasizes that itâs all been as part of a team. âWe have an incredible group of committed board members and staff bringing expertise, knowledge and wisdom. I got the lucky role of being a bit of a conductor and working with everyone collectively.â By everyone, she says she also means volunteers, artists and other local organizations.
âWe support artists, we inspire creativity, we connect communityâ has been the mantra of Yaelâs work with Salt Spring Arts. She says there is a ripple effect when you connect people with arts and culture, yet the impacts of those ripples are often difficult to trace because they can take a long time or have a circuitous journey before they bear fruit.
âThe more we value the arts as a community and as a culture, the more we collectively benefit from how creativity impacts us. The North Star of my work at Salt Spring Arts has always been âcommunity.ââ she says. âSo if I was able to positively move the dial with respect to the quality and quantity of creative opportunities on the island â how artists are supported, how engaged audiences are â thatâs a legacy I can be proud of.â