Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium

Since 1996, the Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium, co-presented by the University of Guelph and the Art Gallery of Guelph (formerly the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre) in partnership with the Guelph Jazz Festival, has brought together diverse communities of interest by providing a scholarly forum for dialogue among researchers, creative practitioners, arts presenters, and members of the general public.

Current Colloquium

Thank you to all who attended the 2026 Guelph Jazz Festival Colloquium! This year’s colloquium has now concluded. Titled “Artists On/Off the Record: Living Archives and Embodied Memory,” the colloquium took place from September 10-11, 2026! Please find the 2026 GJFC site archived below, along with previous editions of the colloquium!

Past Colloquia

• 2026 Artists On/Off the Record: Living Archives and Embodied Memory
• 2025 Dance with the Music: Movement in the Improvised Arts
• 2024 Sheets of Sound: Jazz, Improvisation, and Liner Notes
• 2023 The Third Decade: Forging a Legacy of Improvisation at the Guelph Jazz Festival (GJF)
• 2019  Improvising Instruments
• 2018 Hovering at the Edge: Words, Music, Sound, and Song
• 2017 Partnering for Change: Learning  Outwards from Jazz and Improvisation
• 2016 Improvise Here! Profiles in Practice
• 2015 Among the People: Arts, Improvisation, and Well-Being
• 2014 Sounding Futures
• 2013 Sound Knowledges: A World Artist Summit
• 2012 Pedagogy & Praxis: Improvisation as Social Justice and Social Responsibility
• 2011 Sound Practices: Improvisation, Representation, and Intermediality
• 2010 Improvising Bodies
• 2009 Improvisation, the Arts, and Social Policy
• 2008 Diaspora, Dispersal, Improvisation, and Imagination
• 2007 People Get Ready: the Future of Jazz is NOW!