STORYHIVE On Location: Nanaimo Illana Hester and The Old School House Arts Centre-LS

In this episode of Telus Storyhive On-Location Nanaimo, we drive up the Island to Qualicum Beach to sit down with Illana Hester, the woman running one of BC's most quietly radical community art spaces. She left New York City. She chose this. The Old School House Arts Centre was already a beloved institution when she arrived in 2019, but Illana showed up with three words and the nerve to mean them: digitization, accessibility, intergenerationality. In a town with no Wi-Fi at its arts centre six months before she walked in, she wired the whole thing up, threw open the doors, and started asking who wasn't in the room yet. This is a conversation about what art spaces owe their communities, what cities owe their artists, and what it means to run what she calls a "hospital for the soul" in uncertain times. Produced by Haus of Owl in partnership with TELUS STORYHIVE On Location.