CREATIVE

I create and produce media, culture, and research, with a focus on things that fall between these lines, crafting custom architectures for custom work.

DEVELOPMENT & FUNDRAISING

I help shape strategy and secure funding for creative, public, and social-purpose projects, organizations, and networks: small and large, formal and informal, established and emergent, local and global. I have generated support for initiatives spanning arts/culture, media, food security, economic development, place-making, social justice, immigrant/newcomer networks, and social enterprise.

RESEARCH

As a researcher and consultant I have worked for government, non-profits, non-fiction television and film, and many sector development initiatives.

CLIENTS

My client and partner roster includes avant studios, legacy institutions, peer-driven networks and sundry intrepid, independent teams.

INTERESTS

My curiosity tends toward the liminal, anomalous, divergent, and relational. I'm compelled by the porous, interdependent boundaries of entangled subjectivities, and the abiding persistence, and infinite potentialities, of the not-yet-known. A dynamic collaborator and problem-solver, I am passionate about helping others do things worth doing, make things worth making, fight things worth fighting, and change things worth changing. I enjoy tracing a feedback loop between the macro and the micro, working with complex systems and intimate, personal narratives.

STYLE

  • Flexible, collaborative, solutions-focused
  • Analytical & detail-oriented
  • Values-driven - I bring genuine care and commitment to the projects and people I invest in

Amy Gottung is a creative consultant based in Canada. Bridging sectors and disciplines, her practice evades an easy identity, and encompasses a diverse, international roster of projects, clients, and collaborators.

As a creative producer, Amy has led the development and realization of live music and performance, experimental media, operas, hackathons, and other trans-disciplinary forms. She has worked in documentary production (PBS, Florentine Films), presented at Luminato, and spearheaded a number of flagship projects like A More Beautiful Journey, a custom augmented reality app that animated hundreds of kilometres of Toronto public transit line with site-specific, spatialized music and sound from over 30 artists.

As a development consultant, Amy generates strategy and funding for clients across non-profit and public sectors. She has supported global music industry initiatives (Keychange, food security and community development (Daily Bread, North York Harvest, The Stop Community Food Centre), collective cultural infrastructure (221A), public space-making (The Laneway Project), science engagement (Royal Canadian Institute of Science), and organizations within a range of other milieus, alongside a long list of independent creative projects (from music labels to film to XR media). With a penchant for cross-sector work, she has served in key roles on a number of cultural policy projects, including as the lead local consultant to VibeLab, a global leader in night culture, and the City of Toronto on early development of the City’s Night Economy Strategy.

From 2016-2020 Amy was Executive Director of Toronto’s singular “anarchic, circus-like” music and art series, Long Winter (Rolling Stone), presenting hundreds of experimental artists in festival events. In three seasons she helped build collective-based frameworks and a board of directors, introduced international co-productions with the launch of two festivals focused on underground scenes in Toronto and Paris (Fr), more than tripled revenue and activity, and ushered the organization into annual operating funding streams.

Amy is the founder of several cross-sector interventions and international exchanges in support of self-organized and underground culture, including a co-located transmedia festival, music industry conference, and research symposium, co-presented by Long Winter (Toronto) and La Station Gare des Mines (Paris) in partnership with Toronto Metropolitan University and the Université de Rouen in 2021, and a capacity-building program for DIY spaces, realized in partnership with Trans Europe Halles and leaders from government, real estate, and culture. Alongside a transnational team, she served as one of the research and program leads for Alter-Places: a European Union-funded project exploring the sustainability of alternative cultural spaces, led by LabEx ICCA at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle.

Amy holds a SSHRC-funded M.A. from the University of Toronto and a B. Mus from McGill University. She has been based in Toronto, New York, Montréal, and Vancouver, and speaks English and (pretty good) French. Amy is an active classical singer and Brazilian jiu jitsu blue belt.

Always looking for the others, Amy works in cooperation with values-aligned partners around the world.