Heather Fitzsimmons Frey

Heather Fitzsimmons Frey is an Assistant Professor of Arts and Cultural Management at MacEwan University in Edmonton (amikswacîwâskahikan, Treaty 6 territory), and holds a PhD in Drama, Theatre, and Performance Studies from the University of Toronto. She teaches courses that lead young people to be change makers in the arts and cultural sector, she conducts research, and she has a creative practice. Using archives, qualitative research methods like interviews and focus groups, performance-based historiography, and practice-based creative methodologies, her research focuses on the arts and cultural sector and young people, in both historical and contemporary contexts. Currently, her creative and practice-based research related to the teen demographic include working with Vern Thiessen and adapting EPIC Next New York’s theatre for social change methodology to our local context, and exploring youth engagement and youth interepretive performances in living history museums. With early years audiences she is working on The Urban Wildlife Project(developing play-full immersive theatre experiences for audiences ages 18 months to 5 years old).  Recent TYA and youth-arts research is published in Canadian Theatre Review, Critical Stages/Étages Criticales, Jeunesse, Theatre Research in Canada/Recherches Théâtrales au Canada, Theatre Research in Canada, and in several books. In March 2023 she launched a book regarding teens/youngsters and youth arts organizations called Youthsites: Histories of Creativity, Care and Learning in the City (co-authored with Stuart Poyntz and Julian Sefton-Green, Oxford University Press