AI and the Arts: A Community Conversation

Join artists and industry experts for a round of lightning talks on artificial intelligence and the arts - how it works, how it’s being used today, and its impacts to creativity and culture. Followed by a moderated panel discussion and Q&A. Opening remarks by Library leadership.

We welcome you to submit your questions for the Q&A in advance HERE. While we will make every effort to address a broad range of submitted questions, we may not be able to respond to each one due to time constraints.

Emcee and Moderator: Elise Stolte - CBC Journalist

Elise Stolte has 20 years of experience telling the stories of her community and has been recognized for feature writing, social-impact and community-based journalism. Today she works as an editor and bridge to help communities tell their own stories with the newsroom.

Panelists

Dr. Soroush Sabbaghan, PhD

Associate Professor at the Werklund School of Education

Specialization, Language and Literacy

Kenna Burima

Calgary-based Musician, Songwriter, Educator, Producer, and Writer

Creator and host of the ArtistSpeak YYC series and currently serving as the 2026 TD Incubator Fellow at Werklund Centre.

Lucky Leggott

Calgary-based Visual Artist, 2D and 3D Illustrator, Animator, and Concept Designer

Dr. Bruce Barton, BA, MA, PhD

Professor, Drama - University of Calgary

Biographies

Dr. Soroush Sabbaghan, PhD

Associate Professor at the Werklund School of Education

Specialization, Language and Literacy

Soroush Sabbaghan is an Associate Professor at the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary and serves as the inaugural Generative AI Educational Leader in Residence at the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning. His work focuses on the intersection of educational technology, teacher development, and equity. He has developed multiple AI-powered tools to support inclusive and evidence-informed teaching practices which are used in K–12 and higher education settings.

Soroush has led several collaborative research projects on the ethical integration of generative AI in education, working closely with educators across Canada and internationally. He has served as Principal Investigator on funded studies examining the role of co-designed AI tools in reshaping professional values in teacher education and has published widely on AI literacy, human-centered design, and educational integrity. He is also the editor of Navigating Generative AI in Higher Education: Ethical, Theoretical, and Practical Perspectives, a volume that explores critical tensions and forward-looking frameworks for responsible AI use in academic settings.

Kenna Burima

Calgary-based Musician, Songwriter, Educator, Producer, and Writer

Creator and host of the ArtistSpeak YYC series and currently serving as the 2026 TD Incubator Fellow at Werklund Centre.

With nearly three decades of experience in Alberta’s arts community, Kenna’s work has consistently explored difficult and meaningful topics — including mental health, addiction, faith, misogyny, and social justice — through creative practice and community-centered engagement. She has toured extensively both in group and solo projects and has collaborated with Calgary theatre companies One Yellow Rabbit and Ghost River Theatre. Her music has been heard playing from Calgary Tower’s carillon with the Calgary Song Project and she has taken part in collaborative creative reconciliation with theatrical Indigenous-led sound bath creation Echoes of the Land. She was a contributing member of the Ascenti AI symposium in 2024 and the ensuing book Ascenti: Humans Opening to AI which explored AI in the work of creatives.

Lucky Leggott

Calgary-based Animator, Concept Designer, and 3D Artist

Lucky Leggott is a Calgary-based animator, concept designer, and 3D artist. Their artistic practice is a generalist blend of all things creative, from animation to sound design to costume making, Lucky has tried their hand at pretty much every creative avenue, including a career in drag under the name Vane Merkury.

A graduate of Calgary's Visual College of Art & Design, Lucky's practice bridges traditional illustration and digital production. From storyboard design to independent film projects, their work lives at the intersection of craft and evolving technology.

Dr. Bruce Barton, BA, MA, PhD

Professor, Drama - University of Calgary

Bruce Barton is a performance maker and research/creation scholar located in Calgary, Alberta. His stage and radio plays have been produced across Canada, celebrated with regional and national awards, and anthologized. He works extensively as a director, playwright, dramaturg, and designer with numerous devising and intermedial performance companies across Canada and internationally. He is also the Co-Artistic Director (with Pil Hansen) of Vertical City, an interdisciplinary performance hub they co-founded in 2007.

Bruce’s interdisciplinary orientation runs deep: he holds two Honours Bachelor degrees, one in Literature and one in Visual Arts from the University of Guelph. His Masters degree, also from the University of Guelph, is in Drama, and he received his Doctorate in Theatre and Film from the University of Toronto. Between 2001 and 2014, Bruce taught performance creation, dramaturgy, intermedial performance, and practice-based research at the University of Toronto, where he also served as the Director of the undergraduate Theatre and Drama Studies program and Associate Director of the Graduate Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies. In January 2015, Bruce became the first Director of the newly formed School of Creative and Performing Arts (Dance, Drama and Music) at the University of Calgary, where he also teaches Performance-Creation and Practice-as-Research.

As the Director of the SCPA, Bruce has worked alongside the School’s accomplished faculty and staff to provide both strong and extensive discipline-specific programming and a range of new interdisciplinary opportunities, including a set of core and elective undergraduate courses in interdisciplinary theory and practice and a new interdisciplinary graduate specialization.

Bruce has published in a wide range of peer-reviewed and professional periodicals, including Performance Research, TDR, Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, Theatre Research in Canada, and Canadian Theatre Review. He is a former general editor of Theatre Research in Canada and has several times been issue co-editor of Canadian Theatre Review (“Theatrical Devising,” “Memory,” “Dance and Movement Dramaturgy.” "Articulating Artistic Research"). He has contributed articles to many international essay collections and is the author or editor/contributor of seven books, including Performance as Research: Methodology, Knowledge, Impact (2017), At the Intersection Between Art and Research (2010), and Collective Creation, Collaboration and Devising (2008).

Bruce’s research and creative practice increasingly extend beyond national borders through collaborations with leading scholars and practitioners, particularly in the area of immersive and participatory performance practices, aesthetics, and ethics. He is a past co-convenor of the Performance as Research Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR/FIRT) and a current co-convenor the Artistic Research Working Group of Performance Studies international (PSi). He is also on the Board of PSi as that organization’s first Artist Relations Officer, as well as a founding member of the Artistic Research Study Circle of the Nordic Summer University (NSU). He is also the founder and co-convenor of the “Articulating Artistic Research” Seminar at the Canadian Association for Theatre Research, which he began in 2012. Bruce has also been a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada for over 20 years.

For descriptions of past and current research projects, please visit my personal website at https://brucewbarton.com/

For more information about our performance company Vertical City’s productions, collaborators and processes, check out our company website at https://verticalcityperformance.com/.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Calgary Public Library