Ouitogether : Showcasing Montréal’s diverse cultures
Although Montréal is often described as multicultural, observes Brice Armel Simeu, it lacks both mechanisms and spaces that would allow people to discover the full scope of its diverse communities’ cultural expressions. This is the challenge Brice wants to highlight with the Ouitogether project, a winner of the 2022 Civic Incubator cohort.
Removing barriers to the discoverability of cultural works
A researcher of the transformation of cultural industries, Brice uses tools such as augmented reality and virtual reality to study how online cultural content is accessed. He explores issues of accessibility to such content as well as the limitations facing existing structures that host artistic productions.
While many museums, theaters, and cultural centres have already addressed these questions, access to these institutions requires a reservation or the purchasing of a ticket. Brice thus envisions creating a new, spontaneous, playful dynamic of access to culture—outdoors in neighbourhood parks.
Using immersive digital tools, and with the aim of raising awareness, Ouitogether seeks both to broaden social representations and to counter stereotypes, which are the driving forces behind community withdrawal.
Allowing his entrepreneurial personality to emerge
In this video clip, Brice shares with us his experience as a newcomer to the city of Montréal. He discusses how his discovery of the cultural diversity of the city’s ethnocultural and indigenous communities shaped the idea of Ouitogether, which today takes the form of an entrepreneurial project.
“To address issues of cultural distance and communitarianism, we believed we needed to set up a platform that would enable communities to discover for themselves, firstly, the cultural content being produced in their neighbourhoods. Secondly, that platform would also enable people passing through, such as tourists or residents of other neighbourhoods, to discover the artists at work in these territories.” — Brice
