The Culture Shift - Sirish Rao

In Episode 4 I had the pleasure of speaking with writer, curator and cultural producer, Sirish Rao (he/him), co-founder and Artistic Director of Vancouver's Indian Summer Festival, one of the country's leading multi-arts festivals, curated through a South Asian lens. Sirish co-founded ISF in 2011 with his partner Laura Byspalko, and this past week they announced they were stepping down to make space for new leadership. Sirish has been responsible for introducing some of the world’s most exciting artists and thinkers to Vancouver audiences. He was born in Bangalore, India, and spent a decade as Director of Tara Books, one of India’s most respected publishing houses. He was also on the Advisory Committee of Culture|Shift, Vancouver’s new Culture Plan for 2020-2029. We talked about transitions, programming and what it's like to let go of the organization you built. The Culture Shift is a monthly series of conversations with intersectional artists and arts workers working at the forefront of their practice, and pushing systems change from both within and outside of our institutional spaces. Many thanks to The Green Line for their support of this program. The Green Line is a new hyperlocal digital news outlet based in Toronto that investigates the way we live to help young Torontonians survive and thrive in a rapidly changing city. They focus on producing journalism that looks at community-driven solutions to problems facing the city, so Torontonians are empowered to take action on the issues that matter to them. Visit them at thegreenline.to or on Instagram and TikTok.