Three years in, we return to where we started. Issue One asked what it means to maintain — a practice, a city, a commitment to attention. This issue asks the harder question: what have we actually maintained? What fell away, and what took its place? A reckoning, but a warm one.
Three years ago, we printed a sentence on the first page of the first issue of this magazine: We are not announcing Ottawa as an art city. We are documenting what is already here. It felt true when we wrote it, and a little reckless. We had no archive, no track record, no proof that anyone was waiting for what we were making. We had a conviction — that sustained, careful attention to a place could change how that place understood itself — and a city that had been quietly accumulating the conditions for exactly that kind of attention for decades.
Ten issues later, we are still here. The canal still freezes. The studios on Gladstone are still full, and now they are permanently protected. The view across the river to Gatineau — which we have photographed in every season, in every issue — is still the most underappreciated urban panorama in the country. The shawarma is still excellent. Nous sommes encore là, et la ville aussi. Some things have changed. The NCCLT has four properties now. Still Radio fills the mornings with studio conversations and field recordings from Gatineau Park. The foldout ecosystem map from Issue One — that act of faith we folded into the centrefold — is still pinned to studio walls, though several of the spaces it charted have closed and new ones have opened in their place. That is what maintenance looks like: not the preservation of a fixed state, but the ongoing work of paying attention to what is alive and what needs tending.
Which is why we have returned to where we started. Maintenance was the theme of Issue One. It is the theme of Issue Ten. Not because we have run out of ideas, but because the question has changed shape.
A long-form walk through the city — from the Bytown Museum along the canal, across LeBreton, through the Vanier corridor, and back. Each stop measures the distance between what we imagined for Ottawa in 2028 and what actually happened. Not a report card. Something more like a letter to a city we're still learning to see.
In her NCCLT-secured Vanier studio, Diallo's textile work unfolds at the speed of growth. A conversation about duration, the body's knowledge, and making slow work in a city that is learning to value slowness.
Revisiting Ukeles' Maintenance Art Manifesto through the lens of Ottawa's cultural land trust experiment. What changes when maintenance becomes policy?
A group exhibition in Gatineau maps the cross-river care networks that have quietly reshaped how both cities make and share art.
When the NCCLT acquired its first property — a former print shop on Gladstone Avenue — the idea that a community land trust could secure permanently affordable creative space in a capital city still felt speculative. Two years and four properties later, the model is being studied by Hamilton, Halifax, and Winnipeg. This report examines what's working, what isn't, and what comes next.
On doorways, transitions, and the spaces between. The Ādisōke opening. Artists at the edge of recognition.
Ottawa's relationship to technology and communication. Digital commons. The Nortel/Blackberry ghost. Profiled by Monocle.
Land, territory, and Indigenous presence. Centring Algonquin Anishinaabe artists and perspectives. Won a National Magazine Award for art direction.
The inaugural issue. Ukeles' Maintenance Art Manifesto as framework. Included the foldout ecosystem map — still pinned to studio walls across the city.
still / still is a bilingual arts, culture, and critical discourse publication rooted in Ottawa-Gatineau. Published three times per year since Winter 2028. We cover contemporary art, design, music, literature, performance, digital culture, and the built environment of the National Capital Region.
We do not argue that Ottawa deserves attention. We simply pay attention, and invite others to do the same.
The publication is produced by the still / still media lab — a bilingual editorial operation, cultural radio station, annual arts writing workshop, and online platform based in Ottawa. Still Radio broadcasts daily, featuring studio conversations, field recordings, and cross-river programming in English and French.
We are funded through the Canada Council for the Arts periodical publishing program, the Ontario Arts Council, and earned revenue.
Perfect-bound, 144–168 pages. Matte uncoated stock. Full colour. Printed in Gatineau on FSC-certified paper.
Daily programming in English and French. Morning Studio (7–10h), Midday Review (12–13h), Traversée (18–20h). Online and 101.9 FM Ottawa-Gatineau.
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