Shannon Brunette

Shannon Brunette is the founder of the Office of Cultural Work (OCW). She founded OCW to support cultural workers in navigating oppressive systems and moving their visions into reality. She has had the privilege to work alongside visionary artists for her entire career. She’s held leadership positions at Penumbra Theatre, Walker Art Center, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Lambent Foundation, and Blue Man Group. The final years at Blue Man were spent with the touring production, allowing her to develop a solid foundation for managing artists and dealing with just about everything you could imagine happening with artists on the road.

Brunette's management partnerships include individual artists such as Seitu Ken Jones as well as organizations such as New York Foundation for the Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and Northern Lights.mn. She is a working art educator partnering with institutions and community organizations such as Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Wet Paint Art, Grand Marais Art Colony and more. Shannon holds an MFA from the School of Visual Arts in Chelsea, New York, was a 2017 recipient of the MRAC Next Step Fund award supported by the McKnight Foundation, and was a James P. Shannon Leadership Institute Fellow in 2017. She serves as alumni and inaugural Board Chair of artEquity, an equity and inclusion training organization focusing on the arts and culture field.