Canada’s National Arts Centre has remained the head of the country’s performing arts for over half a century. Situated in the capital of Ottawa, it serves as not only a home for renowned Canadian theatre but a massive investor in both English and French theatre throughout the country, bringing national productions to international eyes. This past week saw the cultural pillar appoint a new artistic director to the NAC’s English theatre—acclaimed Filipino-Canadian director Nina Lee Aquino.

Nina Lee Aquino is well known for her role in championing and developing opportunities for Asian-Canadian theatre. Artistic director of Cahoots Theatre and then Factory Theatre in Toronto, Aquino has been the driving force behind Asian-Canadian theatre conferences, books, and the influential fu-GEN theatre company. The multiple-time artistic director and multiple-award-winning theatre creator clearly has a glowing record for this prestigious role, bringing not only a wealth of experience but a passion for bringing representative theatre to Canada.

Aquino stated that she was “deeply honoured” at the appointment. “I see my appointment as a continuation of the rich legacy of Artistic Directors who came before me and presented stories about the complexity of contemporary Canada. Theatre has been pivoting, shifting and adapting long before this current moment. The idea of this country – that is the Canadian experience, citizenship, identity – is continually evolving, perpetually being defined and re-defined through the lenses of our artistic work. The NAC that I dream of is a creative catalyst for change and transformation”

The appointment of Aquino sees the departure of ten-year artistic director Jillian Keiley, her term ending this August. Keiley will be programmer for the English theatre’s 2022-23 season in conjunction with Black Theatre Workshop—a Montréal based incubator and presenter of BIPOC theatre and the current co-creating company at the NAC.

Canada’s arts institutions have, as always is a potential across the world, risked stagnation over the recent years. But actions by both the National Arts Centre as well as the National Gallery of Canada prove them to be looking to the future of their companies’ impact and influence across artistic communities. Nina Lee Aquino’s appointment as artistic director indicates a desire to put progressive, representative, and boundary-pushing voices in the spotlight. Without a doubt, the NAC has selected a strong leader to steer their creative vision through current turbulent waters and beyond.

Without a doubt, we are moving into another year with a large damper on our hopes and plans. While a large amount of 2021 had hopeful resurgences across artistic mediums, we are now seeing things slide back into high case numbers and tight restrictions. But this doesn’t mean that there still aren’t aspirations to chase and hopes to grow for 2022, and it certainly did not put an end to New Year’s Eve festivities. From a Miley Cyrus hosted party-concert to car burnings in France, and from cancelled live traditions to new digital endeavours, the New Year was rung in as loudly as ever.

Easily the oddest of these happenstances is tangled up with the art world in its own unique ways: the Metaverse, the new name tag for the Facebook company, held their own festivities on their VR forum of Decentraland. To put it bluntly, Decentraland appears to be little more than an elitist, NFT-fuelled rendition of classic digital escapist platform Second Life—but more poorly made. With Paris Hilton the DJ for the night in a Roblox format and this digital world having the aesthetic appeal of an early ‘00s free-to-play game, the event certainly screams of current NFT themes. A recreation of the New York Times Square ball drop lends some interesting integrity to the project, but the entire affair feels like a fever dream from William Gibson’s mind.

On the live side of things, music abounded as always. A flagship performance by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra along the Victoria Harbour lit up the waterfront in accompaniment with towers of digital light designs and fireworks. New York proper had its New Year’s Eve Concert for Peace—an event originally created by legendary composer Leonard Bernstein. And in a superhumanly endearing turn from a wellspring of classic holiday tracks, the Peanuts crew gave us a rendition of Auld Lang Syne combining that moving melody with a New Orleans groove that can’t help but give some hope.

Still from Snoopy Presents: For Auld Lang Syne; courtesy of AppleTV.

It’s clear that the returning tides of the pandemic don’t wash away a love and need for celebration and art, especially in times of milestones. No matter the point of the calendar that a culture’s new year falls on, creative celebration is tied to our jubilation. From cultural focuses on colours- like the bright reds of good fortune seen in Chinese festivities- to the raucous and ritual-like actions- Greece’s smashing of pomegranates or Colombia’s carrying of an empty suitcase- to the near-global fascination with lighting the sky up with fireworks. There is an artfulness and theatric quality to the way we choose to step into a new year.

Sadly the New Year’s Eve festivities of 2021 may mark the return of closures as we step into 2022. With the omicron variant so widespread and restrictions mounting once again, it’s likely we will see galleries closing doors and theatres putting the ghost light on again for a while. It’s certainly not the way in which anyone would want to start the new year, and far be it to say that it’s not an exhausting and triggering situation to be in again. But with the familiarity of the last two year’s norms, the ways we’ve seen arts and governments pivots to deal with the context, and the strides we’ve taken in reducing the impact of the virus on populations, there is still a light in the ringing in of this new year. While it may not be as soon as we’ve all hoped, there is still hundreds of days ahead of us to be surprised with inspiring art, profound connections, and just how much good can be crammed into a single year.

And if not, there’s always 2023.

December 15th saw the death of the legendary author, activist, and professor bell hooks. An impassioned proponent of intersectional feminism and fearless critic of racist and classist societal frameworks, hooks succumbed to kidney failure at the age of 69. Immediately after her passing, an outpouring of commiserations and messages of gratitude towards bell hooks’ work filled social media and news sites—an indication of just how strongly this radically kind and wise mind has affected the public.

A child of small-town, southern segregation, hooks carried a passion for literature and poetry forward into her education, receiving both a BA and MA in English at Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin-Michigan respectively. Shortly after this, she began her career as a professor and lecturer, covering such fields as ethnic studies, African and Afro-American studies, and English.

Perhaps hooks’ most recognized work was her first book Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Almost a decade in the making, Ain’t I A Woman covered the intersections of the civil rights movement and feminist movements, honing in on the oppression perpetuated by these idealistic movements by not regarding the way in which they affected black women in their pursuits. Tying together a history of oppression and boldly critiquing still ongoing socio-political structures, hooks pushed against traditional academia to make black feminist history accessible to a broad audience.

Through appearances in documentaries, her work as an academic mind, and her dozens of books, bell hooks has become a keystone in the modern discourse of feminist theory and practice. With her thoughts covering everything from culture and art to masculine identity and self-love, the moral compass that guided hooks mind throughout life was clear. But it was not only her ability to passionately express her opinions on the pressing matters of female and racial equality, but the deep level of care and concern hooks’ works swelled with that made her writing—and her self—so relatable and so important.