Learning and Co-Creation Labs

Who is it for?

This learning series is for anyone within the arts community who is interested in innovative tools to improve the sustainability of the arts. You don’t need to be an expert in economic development! Our goal is to make this learning series as applicable to your area of practice as possible, and to inspire those who want to take collective action to build more resilience into our way of working.

What to expect?

This learning series will be engaging, emphasizing practical knowledge for action. We’ve built workshop time into each session, to ensure that the Ottawa arts community has time and space to experiment with the concepts and explore how they can be put to use locally. Following the series, Arts Ottawa will host co-design sessions to build out an economic coordination strategy - one that is representative of what the community wants and where our expertise lies.

More about CWB

Community Wealth Building is a people-centered approach to economic development that focuses on building, retaining, and recirculating wealth within local systems and industry by prioritizing local ownership, democratic control, and a more balanced distribution of wealth. It involves using strategies like supporting local cooperatives, social enterprises, and community land trusts, and leveraging the purchasing power of large local institutions to create good jobs and keep resources within the community. Learn more about the model here.

Mike Bulthuis has worked with the Ottawa Community Land Trust (OCLT) since 2023, guiding the organization’s initial housing acquisitions, capital growth, partnership development and community engagement. Throughout the 20 years prior, he worked in various policy, research and community development roles promoting housing security and social inclusion. He has held various positions within the federal public service - developing policy on issues including homelessness, social finance, social innovation and infrastructure - and several leadership positions in the non-profit environment, including Ottawa’s Alliance to End Homelessness. Alongside the OCLT, he’s committed to the preservation and expansion of affordable housing, both within the Ottawa region and across Canada.

Chris Cowperthwaite is the Founder & Principal of Groundforce Digital and Chief Technology Officer at the Art Canada Institute. He brings over a decade of experience helping social impact organizations navigate digital transformation. His approach combines practical technology implementation with team capacity building.

From 2022 to 2024, Chris served as Director & Product Lead for Fineline, a special project of OCAD University funded through the Government of Canada's Future Skills Centre. Fineline set out to build an online art marketplace alongside an artist co-operative — creating an ecosystem where artists and creatives could grow their businesses and develop skills to thrive in a just economy. During his tenure, the project employed 77 staff and contractors and advanced the careers of 400+ artists, with more than 90% of participants reporting increased business skills and confidence.

In the community, Chris serves as Chair of the Open Democracy Project and co-founded the DemocracyXChange Summit. He also serves as an AI & digital transformation coach at Impact Hub Ottawa. Chris holds an MBA from the Schulich School of Business, a B.Sc. (Honours) and Diploma in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Waterloo, and is a Jostens Loran Scholar (1999). In 2025, Chris completed the AI for Business Specialization at Wharton.

Amanda Montague is a Postdoctoral Fellow in community-engaged digital humanities at Carleton University and the lead of StudioDH, a community-based hub for collaborative digital storytelling projects. Through StudioDH, she works with students, researchers, and community organizations to design participatory projects that highlight local knowledge and support more inclusive and equitable approaches to city-building.

Amanda’s work focuses on community facilitation and participatory research methods that center collaboration, creativity, and shared learning. She partners with community groups to build capacity for co-designed research and storytelling initiatives rooted in asset-based community development. Using methods such as participatory media, arts-based workshops, and creative storytelling activities, she helps communities document lived experience, surface local strengths, and engage residents in conversations about belonging and community life.

Her approach emphasizes playful and accessible ways of engaging people in research, creating spaces where community members, students, and researchers can work together to co-produce knowledge and public narratives that reflect diverse perspectives and experiences.