Chinatown will be hosting a new art festival this May, despite a lack of funds for the arts scene in Ottawa.
More than 50 artists submitted their work this March for a chance to be part of Chinatown Remixed, a new initiative by local artists and business owners.
But the planning team won’t find out about city funding until June, when the first-time festival will already be over.
The arts can stimulate the economy, says Donald Kwan, a local artist and owner of Shanghai Restaurant.
To him and the other event planners, the arts and the economy go hand in hand.
The idea for the show emerged in autumn 2008, when Grace Xin, executive director of the Somerset Street Chinatown Business Improvement Area met Kwan.
“We didn’t have a name, we just had a concept, and it grew from there,” Kwan says.
“Chinatown has so much to offer culture-wise,” Kwan says.
His family restaurant regularly hosts musicians and art shows and is a sponsor of Chinatown Remixed.
As part of Asian Heritage Month, the festival will also be sponsored by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario and Chinatown’s BIA.
The Ontario government is also pitching in. The event will receive funding from the Community Builders Fund, a program that funds projects that promote diversity.
Clay sculptor Cynthia O'Brien, says she hopes Chinatown Remixed will become an annual show that will evolve to include other elements, like honorariums for artists.
The selection process is now underway for artists who want their work displayed in restaurants and other businesses around Chinatown.
The project will display work by emerging and established artists.
“It’s grassroots support for the arts because our bureaucracy’s not supporting the arts,” says Pamela Lawler, a mixed-media artist.
“We were a bit inspired by Nuit Blanche,” she says of the annual art festival held in major cities such as Toronto and Montreal.
One of the goals of Chinatown Remixed is to break down stereotypes about art, O’Brien says.
“You think that art should be in a little white box,” she says.
But Chinatown Remixed will feature various mixed media, oils, photography and sculpture from artists with a diverse array of backgrounds.
“It’s good for us to set a good example for other big cities,” says Thanh Ha, owner of My Sweet Tea in Chinatown.
He describes Ottawa as diverse and Chinatown as a place where all cultures mix.
In other major cities, he says, cultures stay within their own communities rather than mixing together.
And in terms of beginning an ambitious new project in the face of a recession, the team says it is optimistic.
Xin puts it simply: “You don’t want art dying because of a recession.”