Gabrielle Martin Receives John Hobday Award
June 17, 2025
We are thrilled to announce that Gabrielle Martin, Artistic Director of PuSh Festival, has been awarded the John Hobday Award in Arts Management by the Canada Council for the Arts.
The announcement, made today (Tuesday, June 17), recognizes Martin’s leadership, vision, and contribution to Canada’s cultural landscape. The John Hobday Awards support talented arts managers in Canadian professional arts organizations with resources for professional development or mentoring. Martin has received the Mentorship Award, which she will use to pursue a yearlong mentorship with Judy Harquail, Canadian Association for the Performing Arts (CAPACOA)’s International Market Development Consultant and member of Canadian Heritage and Global Affairs Canada’s Creative Exports Advisory Table. It will focus on learning opportunities in international engagement and cultural diplomacy through networking and research activities in the Indo-Pacific and Africa.
I feel deeply grateful to have the resources to research relational models for market development in the Global South. At a time of rising xenophobia, advancing equity-driven approaches is both culturally and politically urgent, and it’s encouraging that the Canada Council recognizes the importance of this work in shaping a more just and connected arts ecosystem.”
The John Hobday program was established through a $1 million donation from the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation, honouring John Hobday’s lifetime contributions to professionalizing arts management across Canada. Read on to learn more about the vision Gabrielle has for the PuSh Festival, her journey, what inspires her, and how she feels about winning the award.
Photo by Jeremiah Hughes
Tell us about your journey in the arts sector or your journey that helped you reach where you are today.
I’ve moved through many forms—soloist, choreographer, producer, curator—but I’ve always been in service to the transformative potential of live performance. From international tours as an aerialist to co-directing an international festival, I’ve sought to collaborate on ambitious projects that shift our paradigms – from how we perceive the limitations of the human body to how we relate to one another. Circus performer to artistic director doesn’t seem like a natural progression for most, but they’re both about big dreams, long-term strategy, hard work, resilience, collaboration, and being energized by the magic of the stage.
What inspires you in your work?
I’m inspired by the brilliance of artists, the wilds of untethered imaginations, the liberatory spaces of play, the excitement of foreign ideas, hybridity, cracks, fugitivity. I’m inspired by the expansiveness, aliveness and connection audiences feel when they engage with performances at the festival. And the joy and connection artists feel in sharing their work live with a public. I’m also inspired by facilitating exchange and relationships. And I’m inspired by the incredible team of staff and co-leaders I’ve had at PuSh as well as so many artists and arts leaders in our extended communities.
What are you most proud of in your career?
I’m proud to have helped rebuild PuSh with purpose and care. We’ve deepened our equity commitments, including what it means to be a truly international festival, and curated programs that feel culturally urgent with a workplace culture that makes people want to stick around. I’m proud of the quiet, behind-the-scenes work to build relationships. I’m proud that artists feel valued and audiences are transformed.
What advice would you give to other arts managers hoping to reach their goals or advance their careers?
For me, it’s been about developing my resourcefulness, embracing continuous learning, researching where to find the knowledge I seek, and relationship building. Being courageous to reach out to people I’d like to learn from. I feel incredibly grateful to have been supported in these endeavors by the Canada Council’s programs at different stages of my career. And as a black arts leader, having a leadership coach of colour has been key to supporting my empowerment while unpacking race and leadership; navigating prejudice, lateral violence and the intersections of personal, social and systemic power.
What was your reaction when you learned that you were the winner of a Canada Council prize?
I just feel deeply grateful to have the resources to pursue this work—a yearlong mentorship with Judy Harquail on international engagement and cultural diplomacy in the Indo-Pacific and Africa. Learning from Judy, a leader in Canada’s international market development strategy, is an incredible knowledge-transmission opportunity. Together, we will further her research into relational models for market development in the Global South. At a time of rising xenophobia, advancing equity-driven approaches is both culturally and politically urgent, and it’s encouraging that the Canada Council recognizes the importance of this work in shaping a more just and connected arts ecosystem.
Congratulations, Gabrielle!
The writing shared above is predominantly excerpted from Gabrielle’s mentorship proposal (not an essay as previously noted). The John Hobday Awards are application-based. We regret the error.