Music scene gets lift

By Laura Atherton

Plans for a city-funded “Ottawa Music Strategy” has the capital’s main music industry group — the Ottawa Music Industry Coalition — imagining ways to grow the city’s music scene by providing more support and resources to local artists.

Although the official budget hasn’t been finalized yet, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson recently announced that $100,000 was allocated to the strategy in the city’s 2018 draft budget.

During the Juno Award festivities this summer, Watson announced that a task force made up of people from all sectors of Ottawa’s music industry would be holding focus groups and conducting a public survey, funded by the city, to gather recommendations for what improvements the city should make.

The survey ended in November and the task force is currently writing a first draft of the strategy using the information they collected.

According to Kitchissippi Coun. Jeff Leiper, city council’s representative in the task force, the strategy’s main concerns are creating a bigger audience for music in Ottawa, reviewing noise bylaws governing live music, providing artists with services they need to make a living, creating safe spaces for artists and introducing more music education for kids.

Although local musicians will benefit from the new strategy, Leiper said that the city is looking at the music industry not only from a cultural standpoint but also through the lens of the economy and tourism.

He said one of the things that highlighted the need to build up Ottawa’s music industry was the city’s recent effort to land Amazon’s second North American headquarters. A lively entertainment scene, noted Leiper, is one of the factors that Ottawa lacked in terms of attracting new talent to relocate to work at the new headquarters.

“There are jurisdictions around the world with companies that are competing for that talent. And one of the things that talent is seeking – when they decide where to work and live – is they want vibrant cultural experiences in the cities in which they choose to move,” Leiper said. One of the ways the music strategy is could help create more of show-going culture would be improving marketing and promotion through local media to ensure that Ottawa residents know what’s going on in town.

Leiper said local musicians often feel the need to move away because they have a hard time making a living in the city due to a lack of resources. He added that the strategy should be less about giving individual artists grants and more focused on how the city can build a stronger community of services that a lot of people don’t realize are related to the music industry.

“In order to make a living as an artist here you need services like accountants and managers and PR people,” Leiper said. “There’s a whole professional ecosystem around professional musicians that right now is really only starting to develop in this city.”

Kimya, a 27-year-old Franco-Ontarian rapper, has been involved in the music industry since 2012 and said his biggest struggle starting out was not knowing how to tap into organizations in Ottawa for support. “I didn’t know all that stuff could be there for an artist to develop a career.”

Kimya said the Ottawa Music Strategy could give artists starting out in Ottawa more visibility and opportunities to perform and build an audience –especially Francophone artists.

Kimya performed at an OMIC-sponsored, francophone-themed event Nov. 20 at Centretown’s Bar Robo.

“French people tend to get their music outside of Ottawa, but we have so much potential with the francophone music that we bring,” Kimya said. “Because we’re not living in France. We’re doing it for people here.”

OMIC executive director Andrew Vincent, the task force member responsible for writing the strategy, said that it’s not a new idea. The City of Ottawa has taken inspiration from some of the most musical cities in North America such as Austin, Texas and Montreal.

But Vincent has made clear that in announcing the strategy, Ottawa isn’t trying to copy another city’s music scene.

“I don’t think it’s really about trying to invent anything brand new,” he said. “It’s really about trying to amplify what’s already happening by making connections.”

After holding focus groups over the summer and gathering recommendations from the public survey, a draft of the strategy has been passed along to the task force.

Vincent said the strategy could be implemented in early 2018 after being presented to city council, but no date has been confirmed yet.