Sam Baardman

Sam Baardman is a singer-songwriter, visual artist and cultural leader living in Winnipeg. A belief in the power of art to move people and propel change has been at the core of Sam’s work for over 30 years as an artist and cultural administrator. He has exhibited photography and video installations numerous times in galleries in Canada and the United States. He has also released four full-length albums of original songs and has performed extensively across Canada. He co-founded the River on the Run Artist Collective, a group of environmental artists and poets whose art investigates the increasingly fragile relationship between humans and their habitats. Sam is also a participating artist with the Global Water Futures program, engaged in an ongoing collaboration with hydrological and climate scientists. In his academic career, Sam studied rhetoric, discourse and dialogic philosophy in the field of education. His research focused on investigating the social foundations of meaning-making and the role of collaboration and community discourse in teaching and learning. Following this, Sam spent several decades in leadership positions in the field of arts and culture, culminating in his role as Director of the Arts Branch for the Province of Manitoba. There, he supported the work of artists, cultural organizations and public funding agencies, led the development of Manitoba’s first-ever Cultural Policy, and managed the Province’s investments in the arts and creative industries. All of this was in the service of facilitating the public’s access to the best possible cultural experiences and serving the needs of the most creative professionals in our society.