Arts Network Ottawa and the Ottawa Arts Council are merging!
Uniting our Arts Community to create a New Arts Service Organization in Ottawa.
The planning process to merge Arts Network Ottawa and Ottawa Arts Council is intentionally centered on people’s needs and capacities. By doing so, we hope to build community trust and confidence through meaningful conversations, while fostering a participatory mindset that activates our community in co-creating the new organization.
Our goal is to establish a new arts organization that prioritizes and optimizes its services with the valuable input from our community –the end user of our services. As this work continues, we will continue to provide our current programs and services.
This comprehensive approach places an emphasis on public engagement, positioning the merger between our two organizations as a means of continually connecting people.
The methodology of Human-centered design involves creating products, services, or solutions by putting the needs, preferences, and experiences of end-users at the forefront of the design process to ensure practical and user-friendly outcomes.
Our methodology prioritizes the voices of the community and aligns with the identified priorities and capacities of our organizations. This strategy minimizes risk by co-designing with end users, articulating our findings incrementally in testable stages, and actively seeking feedback to validate our progress.
We have completed our community conversations and design thinking workshops. As we add more stops to our roadmap it will be updated for transparency and so that you can follow along with us!
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We invite your participation through submitting questions-sharing experiences.
With input from you, the valued artist community, we want to build a new Ottawa arts organization that best aligns with your needs. This process is an opportunity for you to engage and help shape the planning for the future.
If you are not already, please subscribe to our newsletters and follow us on social media to stay up to date on presentations and workshops that will be held in 2024:
Follow along with this process!
Community Conversations: Designing a New Arts Service Organization through Collective Vision.
A Series of Presentations and Workshops to shape a new model for a new arts service organization.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Cassandra Olsthoorn.
Cassandra Olsthoorn (she/her)
Executive Director
cassandra@artsnetottawa.ca
As announced in October, Arts Network Ottawa and the Ottawa Arts Council are merging to create a new, unified organization advancing the arts in Ottawa. Together, we will bring a stronger voice to our arts community. The work has not stopped!
With residents, members, and the cultural community, we are building a new Ottawa arts organization that best aligns with the needs of today’s arts community. This process will be a major opportunity to engage our communities in planning for the future. This June both Arts Network Ottawa and the Ottawa Arts Council will have our respective Annual General Meetings where we will present our plan for the future.
The Ottawa Arts Council and Arts Network Ottawa conducted a community online survey in the Fall 2023 to kick off the community engagement process and to assess the perspectives and expectations surrounding the merger of the two organizations. You can view the survey results HERE.
Between now and June, we will continue to consult the community and work with our respective boards and staff to create our plans for a united arts organization for Ottawa.
It’s time to dream, plan, and build for the arts – and we’ll do it together.