MANO Welcomes New Managing Director Ben Donoghue

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The Media Arts Net­work of Ontario/Réseau des Arts Médi­a­tiques de L’Ontario (MANO/RAMO) is pleased to announce the hir­ing of Ben Donoghue as the new Man­ag­ing Direc­tor, effec­tive immediately.

Ben Donoghue is a film­maker, instal­la­tion artist, cura­tor and arts admin­is­tra­tor who has been insti­gat­ing dia­logue and change in the media arts sec­tor for well over a decade.

From 2007–2013, Ben worked as the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Liai­son of Inde­pen­dent Film­mak­ers of Toron­to (LIFT) an artist-run cen­tre spe­cial­iz­ing in media art pro­duc­tion and train­ing. Dur­ing his tenure at LIFT Ben led the con­struc­tion of the organization’s new home at 1137 Dupont Street in Toron­to, com­pleted a series of major com­mis­sions of sin­gle-chan­nel and instal­la­tion works, and steered its embrace of dig­i­tal and inter­ac­tive tech­nolo­gies as a com­pli­ment to its tra­di­tional focus on celluloid.

As an edu­ca­tor Ben has taught exper­i­men­tal film prac­tice and instal­la­tion in diverse insti­tu­tional and com­mu­nity set­tings in British Colum­bia, Ontario and Que­bec. He has worked the boards of numer­ous arts and social jus­tice orga­ni­za­tions across the coun­try and cur­rently serves on the board of the Dou­ble Neg­a­tive Col­lec­tive (Mon­tréal). Ben is also a found­ing col­lec­tive mem­ber of Indige­nous Routes, an inter­ac­tive media project work­ing with Indige­nous youth in mobile, gam­ing and new media platforms.

“Ben was instru­men­tal in orga­niz­ing and exe­cut­ing our ON.Fire con­fer­ence in 2010, and con­tributed great­ly to MANO’s provin­cial out­reach strat­egy when he was still at LIFT,” says Lau­ren Howes, Board Chair.  “It is excit­ing to wel­come him at a piv­otal time of growth for the organization.”

Ben moves into this role replac­ing out­go­ing Direc­tor Ker­ry Swan­son. MANO owes a huge debt of grat­i­tude to Ker­ry as her vision and ener­gy has so suc­cess­fully trans­formed MANO over the past two years. She will be sore­ly missed, but we are delight­ed to see her move into an excit­ing, new­ly cre­ated posi­tion as Out­reach and Eval­u­a­tion Offi­cer at the Toron­to Arts Coun­cil. We wish Ker­ry all the very best for the future.

Save the Date: Evolve or Per­ish Sym­po­sium, Novem­ber 14–17, in part­ner­ship with Galerie SAW Gallery, Arts Court, Ottawa

For more infor­ma­tion vis­it mano-ramo.ca or con­tact Ben Donoghue at director@mano-ramo.ca.