After retiring as a successful entrepreneur, Robert rediscovered his long lost love of playing concert band music and joined Guelph New Horizons and Kitchener Musical Society concert bands playing bass clarinet. After reconnecting with music, Robert came to the realization that today’s society values and respects the corporate arena more than the cultural world. In an effort to provide musicians affordable playing venues. Robert joined the Silence team. His goal is to provide a listening space where artists can develop their audience, build new repertoire, and, most importantly, advance their craft by pushing boundaries through experimentation, improvisations, and sharing with others.

He is Research Chair at the University of Guelph and a leading Canadian humanities researcher who has produced important cross-disciplinary work, including some sixteen books with a wide variety of international presses. His most recent books include (with Ajay Heble and George Lipsitz) The Fierce Urgency of Now: Improvisation, Rights, and the Ethics of Cocreation (Duke UP) and a co-authored book with Martha Nandorfy entitled The Community of Rights • The Rights of Community (Oxford UP), the third in a trilogy of books co-written with Martha Nandorfy on rights issues. Daniel has received several major awards for teaching excellence and is to date the only winner from the Humanities of the prestigious Premier’s Research Excellence Award. He is a multiple award winner of SSHRCC grants as an independent researcher and as a core investigator on the MCRI and Partnership Fund grants and is associated with the Improvisation, Community, and Social Practice (ICASP) project and the International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation (IICSI).

During her studies she was generously supported by multiple SSHRC grants, as well as university specific scholarships in both Canada and the United States. Megan has previously contributed to Silence as a volunteer and staff member but is pleased to now be serving as a member of the Silence board of directors. She is currently a sessional instructor at the University of Waterloo in the department of Communication Arts where she teaches communication in sciences and engineering. Megan lives and writes from Guelph.

“I am proud of having provided opportunities for my community to engage in local decision making,” she says, “because, when given a voice, they always choose a sustainable path despite the tenacity of the status quo.”She recognizes that sustainability is enormously disruptive to business as usual. Effective leadership for sustainability, in Karen’s view, must engage people in a way that helps them see the connection between their daily lives and global issues like poverty, hunger and climate change. “The solutions to these issues are beyond the direct control or influence any single sector or jurisdiction, and are best addressed where people live, work and play: our communities,” she says.She is a former mayor of Guelph and serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Meridian and motusbank and Vice-Chair of QUEST. She has a PhD from the University of Guelph in the sciences and a Chartered Directors designation from McMaster University.

During her time at York, she completed a summer internship here at Silence under the tutelage of former ED, Petra Nyendick. Scarlett’s interests and experiences revolve around art and culture and community organizing. Growing up in a small town in Huron County, Scarlett has devoted her life to crafting space for creativity and expression and fostering artistic communities both in her home county and here in Guelph where she has lived for 7 years. For the summers of 2013 and 2014 Scarlett held the position of Front of House Manager at the internationally acclaimed Blyth Festival Theatre. Midway through her first year at the festival, she was asked by the interim Artistic Director, Peter Smith to join the Board of Directors of the Blyth 14/19 Cultural Initiative which eventually transitioned into The Canadian Centre for Rural Creativity. At the age of 19, Scarlett was the youngest member of the board and contributed to initial fundraising efforts by founding and directing the first and second annual Huronsound Music and Arts Festival, a day long event celebrating arts and culture in Huron County and beyond. During the 2015-2016 academic year Scarlett held the elected position of Local Affairs Commissioner at the Central Student Association at the University of Guelph where she represented approximately 18,000 undergraduate students on over 30 committees and organizations Scarlett brings to Silence a strong feminist, anti-oppression background, a passion for community organizing and artistic development and a dedication to bolstering marginalized voices and communities. She is excited to grow and learn in this position and, with the team, to continue pushing and pulling Silence into brighter and broader vistas.