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Two Ottawa ‘creatives’ not selected for the nightlife council plan their own ‘council-like’ project

November 6, 2024

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Jessica Traina has been quite public when it comes to her views on Ottawa. She has dedicated her Instagram and TikTok pages to informing her audiences about anything and everything going on in the nation’s capital, with the goal of convincing the world that the city is not boring. When applications for the city’s nightlife council opened, she says her audience kept asking if she was going to apply, so she decided to put her name in the mix. She was one of 500 applicants, but didn’t make the final cut. She says her suggestion for the council would have been simple: make what is already good, great. For example, she would have worked to expand the increasingly popular Ottawa Christmas Market and look at the way the city operates music festivals such as Escapade and Riverside Festival. “If I (had been) selected as a member of the council, my concepts were more on tweaking things that were already good to make them great, versus focusing energy on bringing a whole lot of new things (to the city), because we already have a lot of cool things to offer here,” Traina told OBJ Wednesday. After reading about Traina and her positive views on Ottawa in an OBJ article, Mathieu Grondin, the city’s nightlife commissioner, reached out to her last week to let her know that a decision on who would sit on the council was imminent. They met over Zoom for an interview that, for Traina, felt like a “person-to-person chat.” “I was able to sit down with Mathieu and we were able to talk pretty candidly about my ideas, how the nightlife council was going to work, and his plans for it. One of the things I brought up was the concept of red tape in the City of Ottawa. We agreed on a lot of concepts, in the sense that there’s a lot of different bodies that you have to go through, being in the capital city,” she said. Traina also spoke with Grondin about revitalization opportunities that she sees along the Rideau Canal, such as unused green spaces. “A lot of the conversation was spitballing ideas to see where our heads were at and what he was focusing his energy on,” she said. Ultimately, Traina said that, although the decision on the council’s members-at-large was not made public until this week, she had a sense that she was not to be among their number. Now, Traina says she is in the early stages of working on her own council-like project with other creatives in the city in order to make a positive impact. “A couple of us are working together already to work towards doing this nightlife movement on our own, in a way that we believe in,” she said. She says she believes that passion for the project, mixed with reach through social media pages, will create a project with lasting impact. Through her own council, Traina says she’d like to focus on hearing from smaller businesses. “I think the members chosen for the council are great picks. With big people come big ideas. It would be nice to have some flexibility to have some of the little guys featured as well. Maybe we could focus on the little guys, with little ideas, because those are important, too, for keeping our local businesses thriving,” she said. Those “little guys” would consist of local businesses that may not have the same spotlight as others. “There’s a lot of local businesses that I’m aware of that host awesome live music and ticketed events or are looking to create a name for themselves in the bar scene. I would like to put some energy in highlighting those people, the small business owners on my street, that I visit every weekend,” Traina said. Joining her in this project is Jordan Pizzuti, an Ottawa-based writer, content creator and OBJ contributor. Pizzuti also applied to be a part of the nightlife council but was not selected. “The biggest reason (for applying to the city’s council) is that I have a really big belief in Ottawa’s hospitality scene … I’ve worked really hard, like Jessica (Traina) and others, to promote that and it felt like a good opportunity to really have a hand in making a difference,” Pizzuti said. Now, he says the creative-led council idea seems more like a reality. “It’s very early stages. We just had a baseline discussion about getting together and working on some things. We both had this understanding that just because we’re not a part of this hand-picked volunteer council doesn’t mean that we can’t continue to make a difference. We both have a reputation for making a difference in the nightlife and hospitality scenes and it just seemed like the next logical step,” Pizzuti said. Pizzuti says he wants to continue to show what Ottawa has to offer with a focus on storytelling through digital media platforms. “I would love to have an Ottawa hospitality brand, like what I’ve been doing with my brand Are We Having Fun Yet?. There has to be a lot of discussion about what that would look like, but it would also be really cool to be able to combine our expertise, in a sense, to be able to create this digital media platform that is focused on highlighting what Ottawa really has to offer,” he said. Pizzuti says the storytelling aspect would focus on the people behind the food and the esthetics. “What are the stories of individuals that are changing the way we view the city, in a hospitality and nightlife sense? What are they doing to make a difference? Why do they care so much? I just want to be able to tell those stories,” he said. Traina says she hasn’t ruled out applying for the nightlife council again in two years, when current members' mandates are over. “I definitely would try again. I’d like to see that there would potentially be space for a creative or just a resident like me that can give ideas as someone who has their ear to the ground when it comes to things happening in Ottawa. I don’t want to say never to that, but I guess it depends on what happens over the next couple of years with the council,” she said.