Dharma Arts

said Jane Jacobs in The Life and Death of Great American Cities. North of the border her now famous idiom is no less true: a healthy street scene is often a strong indicator of a healthy city. With his weekly installments of Street Art Saturdays between 6 and 8 pm underneath the bridge at Rideau and Sussex, Marcus Jameel is making sure that Ottawa's streets have a positive prognosis. “The experience is really interesting,” says Jameel in describing a typical Saturday. “There's always this weird feeling where people want to stop and watch and some of them feel awkward because they’re surprised about what's really going on. What we've started doing is engaging them in our performance.”

Recently he had his most successful Saturday with over 600 pedestrian spectators stopping to watch the eclectic pool of performers that Jameel had brought together. “Mainly what we have right now are poets, rappers, and hiphop dancers as regulars and then you'll get people who pass by to share their work—or even spectators who get inspired to get in there and perform as well,” he says. A seasoned poet and performer himself, Jameel has represented Ottawa at the National Slam Poetry competitions and placing first individually and contributing to Ottawa's third place team effort. Though he immigrated here from the states (Cincinnati, Ohio to be exact), Jameel has found the Ottawa artistic climate welcoming.

“Ottawa is very much community based and intertwined. People support each other and that's something that I really appreciate.” While he loves the city, he does, however, see where there’s room for improvement. Beyond Street Art Saturdays he’s been putting on an annual event called Words of a Poet, bringing poets from the internationally acclaimed Def Poetry Jam to Ottawa to perform. "I do these shows not only to show the Ottawa scene more poets, but also to raise the caliber of talent—to show what's going on in Ottawa."

Through his initiatives he’s hoping to not only engage his community of artists but to elevate it as well—by connecting it with a broader community of practice. “What really inspired me is a performing group that came through Ottawa called Naturally 7, from New York. There's a youtube clip of them performing in the subway in Paris. At first people were annoyed but by the end people were bobbing their heads and enjoying it. That really inspired me to do this on the street,” he recalls. After connecting with them, Jameel was inspired to step his game up. That having been said, Street Art Saturdays aspires not only to raise the profile of local artists and the level of the scene but also to raise money for charities. An empty hat is extended and the money collected is donated to a different charitable cause every week.

He is ambitious about the trajectory of the event. Through engaging eyes on the street, the streets themselves become cultural amenities for the city—something that Jameel is keenly aware of. “It would be nice over time, as it grows, for the event to become a tourist attraction—something that you can stop in and check out if you're in the city from out of town.” He is aware that achieving his goals will take work, but isn't daunted. What he gets out of Street Art Saturdays is tantamount to what he puts in. “As an organizer, the most that I put into it is contacts, networks and promoting. But what I get out of it is that I'm happy to see people get inspired. To be the catalyst or to be the person who helps somebody is really fulfilling to me.”