City officials, artists and business leaders gathered in June to launch the Arts, Culture and Entertainment (ACE) District, an initiative intended to connect cultural institutions, businesses and public spaces while bringing new public art and programming to the city core.
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said a vibrant downtown is crucial to Ottawa’s identity and long-term growth.
“If we want a stronger Ottawa, we need a stronger ByWard Market and a stronger downtown,” he said.
Cindy VanBuskirk, the City of Ottawa’s program manager for high economic impact projects and a board member at Tourism Ottawa, said visitors increasingly seek authentic local experiences rather than simply checking landmarks off a list. She said those experiences rely on creative workers.
“Every mural, every performance, every show, every festival and every single creative experience that draws people together begins with an artist,” she said.
The ACE initiative is led by the Ottawa Art Gallery, which is serving as district secretariat. According to OAG director Alexandra Badzak, the idea emerged during the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, when cultural leaders began looking for ways to help to revive a struggling downtown.
Badzak said the district is less about creating a new institution and more about creating a new way of working among organizations already active in the city.
“It’s not a new institution,” she said in an interview with Capital Current. “It’s a new methodology to help us strengthen partnerships, create visibility and really change the ecosystem.”
An advisory table bringing together Ottawa Tourism, the National Arts Centre, the National Gallery of Canada, Arts Ottawa, Ottawa Festivals, the Ottawa Music Industry Coalition and the city’s business improvement areas is intended to coordinate efforts and amplify existing projects.
Badzak said investment in culture brings benefits beyond the arts sector itself, helping attract visitors and businesses while creating a stronger sense of place.
“Artists matter,” she emphasized. “They’re storytellers and they help to create a sense of place.”
The launch also unveiled the first phase of the Arts Corridor, an Ottawa 200 legacy project featuring large-scale public artworks by local and nationally recognized artists.
Artist Sam Loewen, whose mural is located at 41 York St. on the side of the Lookout Bar, described the installation as reflecting his own journey from a rural community to an urban home. Drawing on the Indigenous symbolism of the Three Sisters crops — corn, beans and squash — he said the work represents the strength that comes from diversity and collaboration.
“When each of us brings our abilities and talents together, we produce bountiful harvests,” he said.
Mi’kmaq artist Jordan Bennett spoke about bringing Indigenous stories and visual traditions into everyday spaces through a large-scale installation on a city parking garage on 70 Clarence Street.
“There’s so much power in public artwork,” Bennett said. “I wanted to bring those stories to people on the street.”
Bennett told the crowd the work now belongs to the public: “I had a chance to create it, and now it’s yours to take care of, and yours to visit with,” he said.
Badzak said success would be measured through economic and tourism impacts, but also through changing how residents think about downtown Ottawa.
“Five years from now,” she said, “what I hope to see is that we’ve changed the channel on how people perceive the downtown of Ottawa, that it’s a place of safety and excitement, that Ottawa has a story to tell.”
