The OSA Outreach Program is dedicated to providing free, community based visual art classes with children, youth and seniors who face difficult economic or social circumstances, and have limited access to the many benefits of a structured creative environment.

Our main objectives are to significantly enhance the quality of their lives, prepare the children and youth for future success, and to provide the opportunity to seniors to stay active and connected in their community.

We seek to remove all economic barriers (no enrolment fees, no art supply costs and no transportation as the classes are taught in the neighbourhood at a local community house or community centre) to those children and youth with talent and an interest in the visual arts that would otherwise not have access to art classes.

Generous donors provide funding to cover the cost of tuition and supplies, including packages of materials that program participants are welcome to take home to continue to build on their newfound skills.

We promote art making as a healthy activity that will strengthen ties across communities and cultivate an appreciation for the arts and culture. Modeled after the OSA’s high quality programming, classes are taught by professional artist-instructors who are assisted by classroom technicians hired from within the community. In addition, the student-teacher ratio is kept low to ensure each child or youth receives individual attention and guidance.

Providing a safe and nurturing environment, participants are encouraged to develop their creativity and cultural awareness. They are invited to explore different types of media, such as: cartooning, sculpture, photography and painting through various projects; learning that success can be achieved through a variety of means. Many students transfer their desire to try (and succeed) at art to other academic subjects.

Over the past twenty-two (22) years, the OSA Outreach Program has delivered barrier-free art classes and workshops to over 6199 children, teens and adults in the city of Ottawa. In 2022-2023 we offered classes & workshops to 324 participants.

This program is generously supported by Telus Friendly Futures Foundation, City of Ottawa, Crayola, Kiwanis Club of Ottawa, and Bottom - Line Drawing Group.

Everyone deserves the chance to create

Right now, across Ottawa, kids in public housing, youth without a home, and seniors living alone are picking up a paintbrush for the first time for free, because someone like you made it possible.

Give to OSA's Outreach Program

Our 2023-2024 Community Partners include:

Christie Lake Kids
Carlington Community Health Centre
CNIB
John Howard Society
Rideau-Rockliffe Community Resource Centre
Rochester Heights Community House
Operation Come Home
Options Bytown
Minwaashin Lodge
Sandy Hill Community Health Centre
Tukimuut Lodge
Winthrop Court Community House

For thousands of people in our city, learning visual art is out of reach.

There's no money for supplies, no class nearby, no way to get there. So the spark goes unlit.

The OSA Outreach Program aims to change that.

We bring professional artists directly into community centres across Ottawa, and we make every class free for the students. No fees. No supply costs. No transport needed.

No barriers between a person and the moment they discover what they can create.

22 years

bringing visual arts learning to Ottawa communities

6,000+

students introduced to creating visual art

paid by participants

What your support makes possible

And the change doesn't stay in the classroom. Again and again, instructors watch students carry their new confidence into school, into relationships, into the rest of their lives.

Art from the 2025 John Howard Society Student Exhibition

Taught at local community centres, so transportation is never the reason someone misses out.

Classes in the neighbourhood

Assisted by classroom technicians hired from within the community itself.

Professional artist-instructors

No enrolment fees, no cost for materials.

Completely free

Where confidence, focus, and friendship grow alongside artistic skill.

A safe place to belong

Young people found a way forward.

At Operation Come Home, youth experiencing homelessness find more than an art class — they find acceptance, a trusted mentor, and a way to process what they've survived. Some have even sold their work at local events, earning income and a pride that follows them toward stable housing, education, and work.

Lillian found herself.

A system had failed her. Then she walked into an Outreach workshop and found an outlet for everything she'd been holding in. Her work soon filled a display case at an OSA exhibition, and today she's setting her sights on OSA's diploma program. "I believe in myself again," she says. "I am confident in the person I've become."

A frightened child found her calm.

In a public-housing community where quality programs are scarce, one little girl arrives each week anxious and unsure. She settles at the table. She begins to draw. Over a single year, she has filled a portfolio — and grown into a more confident version of herself, one drawing at a time.