Digital Arts Resource Centre

**OUR MISSION** Digital Arts Resource Centre (formerly SAW Video) is a not-for-profit, artist-run media art centre that fosters the growth and development of artists through access to equipment, training, mentorship, and programming. Our mission is to support a diverse community of media artists empowered by technology, programming and the exchange of ideas. Our core principles are independence of expression, affordable access to all, and paying artists for their work. Digital Arts Resource Centre values diversity and actively promotes equity for all artists regardless of race, age, class, gender, sexual orientation, language, or ability. We acknowledge that Digital Arts Resource Centre is located on land that is part of the unceded and unsurrendered Traditional Territory of the Algonquin people. We honour the Algonquin people and elders, whose ancestors have occupied this territory since time immemorial, and whose culture has nurtured and continues to nurture this land and its people. **OUR HISTORY** SAW Video was initiated in 1981 as a project of the Sussex Annex Works (S.A.W.) located in Ottawa’s Byward Market. Highlights of SAW Video Coop’s early years include the Ottawa International Festival of Video Art (1983 & 1986) and the JumpstART grant was created in 1985 to assist artists new to video and continues to this day, having supported over 100 productions. In 1988, SAW Video and SAW Gallery moved together to Arts Court, forming the multidisciplinary centre Galerie-SAW-Video. Stability in Arts Court resulted in significant growth for SAW Video in the 1990’s, growing membership and enhancing our facilities. A youth training program (1997 to 2006), introduced a new generation of video makers to the centre. In 2001, SAW Video officially separated from SAW Gallery, forming SAW Video Association. Specific innovative successes and opportunities for media artists over the years include the development and launch of Mediatheque in 2003, an online streaming platform (beating Youtube by two years) featuring 500 films/videos by Canadian independent media artists; Far Out Locations brings video workshops to priority neighbourhoods across Ottawa since 2007; Public Domain, a national commissioning project in collaboration with Library and Archives Canada (2009-10); Spark Lab, a video training/creation program for Deaf and disabled artists (2017); Knot Projections: Imagining Publics– a large-scale public projection series that took place throughout Ottawa from July to November 2019