FORT ST. JOHN, B.C. – The City of Fort St. John’s Arts and Culture Manager Eryn Griffith says she hopes to improve arts and culture in the city through communication and more community interaction.
Griffith says her mandate is to support arts and culture in the city and the way she plans on doing that is by meeting with various arts, community, and cultural groups in FSJ and directing them towards funding. She also wants to connect the groups with others in the community working on similar projects.
“My main objective is to support arts and culture in whatever way that I can or whatever way the city can. Just finding out what the community is interested in doing, what’s working now, what people need support in what they’ve wanted to do but haven’t been able to do necessarily. If we work together, we can accomplish things together,” Griffiths said.
The City posted the arts and culture manager position after announcing that the city would take over management of the North Peace Cultural Centre after the five-year management agreement ended in 2020 with the cultural society.
Since then, the two parties agreed to a 90-day cooling-off period on July 19th and took part in a mediation session. The city announced in December they plan on engaging in another mediation session in the near future with the society.
Griffith was hired as the arts and culture manager five months ago.
Before coming to work in the Peace Region, Griffith was a business owner and managed the art gallery and local theatre in Terrace, B.C. but left to get her Master’s degree in 2016.
She then ended up at the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal before becoming the director of production for the Globe Theatre in Saskatchewan.
Griffith says she wanted to get back to a smaller community and was pleased when the arts and culture manager position opened up in FSJ.
