Last in print

However you’ve landed here, welcome. I’m hoping it’s because you are part of, or just interested in, Ottawa’s arts and creativity. That’s what UnFolding’s blog is all about, as will be its full Website when it launches in early March. Both carry on the print edition’s attempt (as Kitch Art 2007-2009; as UnFolding 2009) to reveal that Ottawa is actually a very creative place. As far as I can tell, this is the first entity devoted to all Ottawa’s arts. Others do parts of it very well, but it is astounding that this is the only major city in Canada without at least one medium dedicated to exploring the entire creative puddle. Maybe it wasn’t the right time until now? Maybe it will never be the right time in a place as insularly comfortable as Ottawa. The signs say opposite: one is the huge number of arts-community people out there talking with their hands; big circles, short chops, anything but the hand on the chin framing a pensive look. People talk with their hands when they’re excited, and the words I’m hearing are about optimism for a talented yet still-bridled scene and about the potential to take some risk. That’s an important point because outside their own media, risk is not something artists necessarily like to dance to. That risk and how it’s happening will be explored at length in this blog, especially when it involves collaboration. We love collaboration because it tends to be grassroots and has a wonderful grit to chasten elitism. We are suspicious of elitism because it makes art binary – winners and losers. Art needs a new way of relating to consumer-driven corporatism, and it’s a long path to workable options. Yet the best start is by making this city less uncomfortable with creativity, which is what UnFolding and others are trying to do. One thing for sure, it isn’t going to happen in the trickle-down system that has been the arts in Ottawa, in Canada, since before the Baby Boomers. And there’s the paradox: Boomers want art to stay aloof from market forces and yet support efforts to turn it into a business. I’m trying to work that one out, because I am a Boomer and am still sloughing off the cultural bull pocky I was fed since childhood. And, yes, our current government is not helping (with a few exceptions like Ottawa MP Paul Dewar, who at least is trying to get a new discussion about art and society started). Our elected leaders reveal their fear when they point at the diminishing market demand for art (not true) and then slice all small (under 5,000 circulation, which is 80 percent of Canada’s arts and culture mags and papers) arts publications from funding under the Canadian Magazine Fund. And why did Chatelaine need $2.7 million from the CMF last year anyway? Art in Ottawa is not just political. It’s actually very sophisticated but too insular and dependant on (diminishing)  government support. What is very cool about the scene now is what people are willing to try, like Sanitas Playback Theatre’s 21^st Century take on JL Moreno’s  psychodrama or Don Monet putting out big, big bucks to open a second Cube Gallery four blocks from the original. What are these people are trying to tell us? I’m not sure, but both use their hands a whole lot when I talk to them. I hope you will enjoy the ideas to be published in this space and would love to hear your thoughts about art and creativity in Ottawa.