carla stepheson (she/her)

Practice Name: Rural Arts Inclusion Lab

Role: Founder

Bio: Carla’s work sits at the intersection of arts, systems change, rural innovation and amplification. She is the founder of the Rural Arts Inclusion Lab, director of the Pathways program and Executive Director of Renascence, a non-profit society in Ymir BC. She is also the co-founder of the Tiny Lights Festival. Carla is a member of the Arts BC Insight team and an alumna of the Positive Deviants Fellowship.

Her facilitation work is grounded in creating conditions where emergence can happen through listening and collective story harvesting. She believes art plays a vital role in disrupting and getting to the truth of issues in subversive and overt ways. Carla brings to her work the lived experience of being a mixed-race woman of colour who lives on the unceded and stolen land of the Sinixt (sńʕaýckstx ).