New digital hub for Ottawa’s arts community

The website, which was created thanks to a $25,500 grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, was unveiled at the Cyrville Community Centre on Tuesday, April 14. “Members will now be able to promote themselves and their events, share news, views and posts and learn about new opportunities for local arts,” said Heather Jamieson, vice-president of AOE’s board of governors.

The new website was design specifically so the organization’s members could become active participants by posting their own events in an interactive calendar and discussing issues on the website’s forum. They can also showcase their work on their individual web page, accessed through a directory on the site’s home page. “This is a huge benefit to members… that don’t have a website. They’ll be able to hand the link off to people and be able to sell their work through our site even; update as much as they want,” said Micheline Joanisse, director of communications at AOE.

With several individual artists and about 70 arts organizations as their members, AOE represents over 15,000 people in the region. By allowing members to input their own data, the site will save the staff a lot of administrative work – a welcomed break as AOE’s attention focuses on moving into the Shenkman Arts Centre next month, she explained.

The newly-designed website is part of a much larger re-branding exercise the organization took up about a year ago, she added. “We felt we needed to have a stronger brand identity,” Joanisse explained.

In its makeover efforts, AOE has introduced a new logo, redesigned its four arts publications and departed with its full-length name to stick with the catchier acronym AOE. “(The website) was the final piece of the puzzle,” Joanisse said.

The new website’s slick design is the creative product of Theo Bowes and his colleagues at Atomic Motion, a Gloucester-based web-development company. “I absolutely love it,” said Bowes, looking at the website’s home page at last week’s unveiling. “I think it’s really going to be an important part to the growth and support to the arts community. It can open a lot of doors to a lot of people.”

For Bowes, one of his biggest challenges when designing the site was to find a way to showcase all forms of arts covered by AOE’s members. “How do you accurately give each of them a voice and a proper focus?” he said, explaining the problem was solved by adding rotating images on the site’s main page, each representing a different art form.

Now, visitors accessing the site will see alternating images which embody AOE’s five arts categories: visual, performing, media and literary arts as well as music.

Beyond creating the site, Atomic Motion also offered AOE a discount that matched the Trillium grant the arts organization received. “The money from Trillium was absolutely essential,” added Christine Tremblay, AOE’s executive director, as well as applauding Atomic Motion’s financial contribution. “We could never have done this without that.” For more information, please visit www.artsottawaeast.ca