Meet our artist-in-residence Melanie Yugo!

Melanie Yugo is an educator, organizer, and social practice artist. A young cultural leader, Melanie is committed to creating initiatives so that citizens have access to and participate in social and cultural life. She focuses on engaging underrepresented, diverse and youth communities through the arts.

Melanie is Co-founder and Director of Possible Worlds, an art and music hub in Ottawa's Chinatown, and Spins & Needles, a studio recognized for its public arts programming in non-traditional venues. She uses printmaking and graphic arts to explore the reconstruction of narratives and representations related to identity and place. Melanie's work has been presented and supported through commissions, exhibitions, grants and residencies in Canada, USA, United Kingdom, Europe and the Philippines.

In parallel, Melanie has built a career in policy and research, including at the Department of Canadian Heritage and Canada Council for the Arts. Career highlights include launching the Canadian hub of the Salzburg Global Seminar Young Cultural Innovators Forum, the Emerging Indigenous Arts Administrators Program, the inaugural 2018 Americas Cultural Summit, as well as managing the national network of federal/provincial/territorial public arts funders. She has served as a youth advisor to the Canadian Commission for UNESCO, as a consultant on public programming for local and federal cultural institutions, and was one of the early members of MUFASA (McGill University Filipino-Asian Students' Association).  

Melanie received a B.Sc. in Psychology from McGill University, an M.Sc. in Social and Cultural Psychology from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and completed summer studies at the School of Visual Arts. Melanie was born in Toronto and is now based in Ottawa.