$250,000 arts fund created by Ottawa 2017 group

Focus on ‘cultural tourism’ key part of celebrating Canada’s 150th birthday

There’s a cool quarter-million out there, just waiting for artists to come up with ideas to celebrate the capital in 2017.

The Ottawa 2017 organization, chaired by Mayor Jim Watson, announced the $250,000 pot of money Thursday during an event at Orange Art Gallery.

The arts will “play a central role” in the year-long celebration of the country’s 150th birthday in the city, Watson says.

“Arts attract people to our city,” he says, and notes that, “with an aging demographic, cultural tourism is on the rise, culinary tourism is on the rise. If we get more of our artists and arts groups involved with special projects for our 150th, that attracts more people to the city.”

What sort of projects would the mayor like to see?

“Perhaps a photographic exhibit in the downtown core,” he says. “Maybe the Ottawa Symphony Orchestra has a special piece written for it to perform in 2017. We want the community which is very creative, to be even more creative and come up with some great ideas.”

The funding comes from the Ottawa 2017 organization and lead sponsor the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. The grant program will be administered by three groups, AOE Arts Council, the Council of Heritage Organizations in Ottawa, and the Ottawa Arts Council.

“We really want to see some interesting collaboration across our sectors,” says Catherine Lindquist, of the Council of Heritage Organizations. “We’re really hoping arts and heritage will work together.”

Lindquist directs interested artists and groups to the ottawa2017.ca website, where criteria for the grants are found behind the “Get Involved” button.

Grants will range from $5,000 to $25,000, and can be for new or existing activities that are “enhanced” to fit the celebration’s theme. Not-for-profit groups or “cultural collectives” can apply, and individual artists must be affiliated with the former or latter. Government-funded groups can partner with local groups.

Not eligible, the site says, are any groups whose “primary mandate is not arts, heritage or culturally related.” The site also says no “festivals or fairs,” though there are plenty of small, nonprofit festivals in the city that can readily complement the 2017 theme — and they’re interested.

“Any investment into the arts is welcomed,” says Jon Bartlett, who runs the Kelp Music record label in Ottawa and just wrapped the 2016 version of the Megaphono series of shows and panel discussions that highlighted the local music scene — 47 of 60 performers heard during the festival were local.

“It would be great to have some support for Megaphono,” Bartlett says. “We just finished this year last week and it went really well. We had a lot of outside industry people coming through Ottawa, and anything you can do to build that up, propping up local artists …”

The deadline for applications is March 24, after which a jury will select projects for funding.