To our Nextfest family,

The Board, Staff, and Curators of The Nextfest Arts Company are excited to announce that Simone A. Medina Polo (she/her) has joined our team as our next Festival Producer. 

Simone has been a part of Nextfest for many years as an artist and most recently, Pride Nite Curator, and Community Facilitator in 2020.

Our entire team is thrilled to move forward under her leadership as she creates new energy and perspective for emerging artists. As an addition to the leadership team, Simone is eager to offer her efforts back to Nextfest, a community that has offered her much in her artistic development.

In many respects, Nextfest has offered me much by way of mentorship and artistic growth over the years. I am excited to grow into the role to offer the same to the upcoming generation of emerging artists.

More about Simone  

Simone A. Medina Polo (she/her) is a trans Latinx interdisciplinary scholar and artist based out of Edmonton, Alberta. Through her artistic and community-based endeavours, Simone has been a curator and organizer for lectures, dialogues, panels, visual art exhibits, music shows, and festivals – some of her most recent and notable work includes the curation of Nextfest’s 2020 Pride Nite Club with Ricky Holloway, the short film “Stories from Nowhere in Particular” produced for Found Festival, and her research contributions for the Edmonton Performing Arts Accessibility Ad Hoc Group report with Kelsie Acton and Brooke Leifso.

In 2016, Simone graduated from Concordia University of Edmonton with a B.A. in Philosophy and English. Simone is keenly interested in theories of emancipation as informed by philosophy and psychoanalysis, with a propensity to casually write entire essays in her spare time. This tendency has landed her as a presenter for Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology (Warsaw, 2017) and for the 6th Annual Derrida Today Conference (Montreal, 2018). Most recently, Simone has entered her last year in the Arts and Cultural Management program at MacEwan University. Simone is interested in building dynamic infrastructures that support and foster wide-ranging communities. 

(Simone is also really into Garfield.)

Stay Tuned for More

Nextfest marks the beginning of a long creative journey for a huge array of artists. Our circle continues to grow and evolve with our artists and staff as they grow and evolve, too. We are a platform for emerging artists, a meeting ground for community, a springboard for creative invention. Mentorship, inclusion, learning, creative risk, and vulnerability are at the core of everything we stand for.

While the 2021 festival will be Simone’s first year with us, she will be taking over this role while training alongside our outgoing Festival Producer, Maggie Barton Baird. The circle continues – we are thrilled to begin a new chapter in the Nextfest legacy, 25 years and going – the Nextfest community keeps on growing!

Love, 

The Nextfest Arts Company

To read about our festival producer change – please read our Time for Change announcement.