Learn – Feb 2015
The Making of Doors of Ottawa
Submission by Nicole Sammut
Doors of Ottawa is a poster that celebrates the importance of Canadian built heritage within our city. The opportunity to design, create and produce the poster presented itself a few years ago while I was teaching a course on Canadian Architecture: The Buildings of Ottawa. While compiling resources and materials for teaching, I discovered a lack of images and publications on the depth and breadth of Canadian architecture in Ottawa. Photographing the entryways to some of the most spectacular heritage buildings in the city opened the doorway to studying Canadian architecture. From the eighty plus doors I photographed in the summer, the Doors of Ottawa poster offers a glimpse into the many unique and beautiful places we have to discover in our city.
One of the doors featured in the poster is Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts, Home of the National Irish Canadian Cultural Centre in Lower town, Ottawa. The Doors of Ottawa poster was launched at its vernissage opening at Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts. Since the launch of the poster last June, Heritage Ottawa has endorsed the project and features the poster at their monthly Heritage Lecture Series. The organization is dedicated to raising awareness for the preservation of significant heritage buildings by community volunteers.
While many are eager to learn about the various doors featured on the poster, the purpose of the project is to encourage individuals to walk around the city and discover the beauty of Ottawa’s heritage for themselves. Copies of the poster are made available for purchase from Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts. Half of the funds raised from all poster sales are donated to the space for the continued sustainability and conservation of the building. For more information on the Doors of Ottawa, please email info@sbcottawa.ca.
“the heart of everything”
Contributed by Alan Brown
Music has been at the heart of everything I’ve loved most about my experience on this planet;
Producing Sound & Music has shaped the roads I have travelled (30 creative years of guitar music in live performance and as a recording artist), which friends & relationships I have made the strongest connections with, and what sorts of contracts I pursue with my own audio business where I compose music soundtracks and record voices, sounds and instruments for visual media.
Working in the music industry since before graduating high school through to years of travelling, touring, writing & recording as fulltime musician – rich and varied in experience and exhaustive in terms of self-employment hours –always perfecting the craft, planning the next performance, scheduling promotional opportunities, composing, editing and producing new material. The pay rarely equates to how much time an artist puts into their chosen medium, it’s for the love of how that makes them feel and pursuit of the passion.
All things audio continued to be largely influential to my higher education choices once I retired from the ‘road’ in the school of rock and looked for other ways to ‘suffer for my art’;
I became a student at Algonquin back in the 20th century, where digital technology brought powerful and affordable audio/visual tools, typically expensive and exclusive hardware, to the desktop of mere mortals. Once I learned essential production tools in the Interactive Multimedia program I freelanced as a content developer and landed many rewarding contracts for soundtrack work for TV. Along the way I created work for myself in sound recording on movie sets.
I had always been eager to share my gifts for guitar and music, and had years of teaching experience with students who wanted to know how to communicate through an instrument. Now with more experience to share I approached the college to offer my services to teach a digital audio production component to their expanding Interactive Media Design and Game Development programs, and soon found myself developing the curriculum and leading students on a journey into sound recording, editing and production.
After 11 years of teaching and technology, primarily with audio production, video tools and interactivity for the school of Media & Design, I can still regularly be found working in our audio recording studio and helping make movie magic in our green-screen studio.
I am fortunate to be in an environment where I get to discuss my favorite things with eager minds who crave insight that will complement their productions and vision. I spoil the students a little by supplying my own musical instruments for them to use – music is meant to played, not stored in a case.
I still hear from former students who tell me how they continue to apply techniques they learned in my class. No longer students, they have become colleagues and they go on to inspire others, making this musical journey more exciting for everyone along the way.
In my role as a teacher, musician, father, friend, I always aspire to bring people and ideas together in meaningful ways.
Music is one of the most versatile forms of communication, superseding most communication issues & language barriers and should be encouraged in all humans. Everything is sound and vibration.
I’d like to quote the late great Frank Zappa
“Information is not knowledge.
Knowledge is not wisdom.
Wisdom is not truth.
Truth is not beauty.
Beauty is not love.
Love is not music.
Music is THE BEST.”
I welcome any musically interested minds to reach out:
Music
https://albrown.bandcamp.com/music
LinkeIn
https://ca.linkedin.com/pub/alan–brown/13/b5b/465
Facebook Music Page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alan-Brown/14352042980