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 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've raised millions in project and operating funding for initiatives across arts and culture, media, social services, place-making, and community development.

RESEARCH

As a researcher I've contributed to public policy and sector development (cultural spaces, creative industries, nighttime economies), as well as documentary TV/film.

I have a passion for complex problem definition and analysis, and help clients build evidence-based strategies through robust research and deep interpersonal exchange.

CLIENTS

My client and partner roster includes legacy institutions, international networks, experimental collectives, 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 mapping causal channels between the macro and the micro, working with complex systems and personal narratives.

STYLE

  • Flexible, collaborative, candid
  • Analytical, thorough
  • Values, impact, and people-driven

Amy Gottung is a producer and social-purpose strategist 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 produced a number of flagship independent 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.

As a fundraising and development consultant, Amy generates strategy and secures funding for cultural and social-purpose work. She has supported global music industry initiatives (Keychange), food security and community development (Daily Bread, The Stop Community Food Centre), collective cultural infrastructure (221A), public space-making (The Laneway Project), and science engagement (Royal Canadian Institute of Science), alongside a long list of innovative creative work (from music to film to XR media).

With affinity for cross-sector engagement, 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” experimental music and art series, Long Winter (Rolling Stone), presenting hundreds of artists and collectives in festival events. In three seasons she helped build collective-based frameworks and a board of directors, initiated 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 and spaces, including a six-day 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 bespoke capacity-building program for DIY spaces, realized in partnership with Trans Europe Halles and a cross-sector pool of leaders in social purpose real estate. She also 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 Dr. Natalia Bobadilla and team at 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 (decent) French. Amy is an active classical singer and trains Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

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