 Good afternoon. My name is Christina Tessier, and I'm the Director General of the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Welcome to the launch of How Does Science Inspire You, a new national mural art contest led by the Canada Science and Technology Museum in collaboration with House of Paint. I have the pleasure of presenting to you a few guests of Mark, who are here with us to participate in the event today, notably the Honourable Melanie Jolie, Minister of the Canadian Heritage and Minister of the Science and Technology Museum of Canada. Dave McGinty, Member of Parliament for Ottawa South, Councillor Jean Cloutier, Ward 18, Alta Vista, Alex Benet, President and CEO of the Canada Science and Technology Museums Corporation, Patrick McCormick, Executive Director of the House of Paint Festival of Urban Arts and Culture, teachers and grade 7 and 8 students from Queen Elizabeth Public School here in Ottawa, as well as a number of representatives from the many companies that are supporting the renewal of the museum just behind us here, what you can't see behind this wall. A little later, we will open the floor to questions from the media and one-on-one interviews for those who are interested. Then we will take a tour of the museum's new virtual reality exhibition, which we will hear more about in a few minutes. Before asking Minister Jolie to come to the podium, I'd like to say a few words about the purpose of this contest. It's a creative and engaging way to help bring to life the change in our vision for the museum when it reopens in the fall of 2017. Creativity and the arts are often the inspiration for innovation and advances in science and technology. As part of our museum's renewal initiative, we are incorporating the creative spirit into our core themes of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or STEM for short. In future, STEM will become STEAM in recognition of the emphasis the museum will place on the arts and the creative process within the science spectrum. What better way to explore our new vision than to ask young Canadians to share with us through art how science inspires them. It is my hope that everyone here today makes a point of visiting the museum when it reopens in late 2017. I guarantee you the experience will be a memorable one, an inspiration for all Canadians to explore innovations in science and technology in a dynamic, interactive and highly digital setting. Allow me now to introduce you to the Minister of Canadian Heritage, Melanie Jolie. Thank you all for being here. Thank you very much for being here. Special guests, ladies and gentlemen, and my fellow colleagues in front. I am very happy to be here today. It is always a pleasure, of course, to support the projects of our national museums and to support our young people, and also to be present in various places in Ottawa, including in the scope of the reconstruction of my colleague David McGuinty. And I am lucky today to participate in this major project, which is the new version of the Museum of Science and Technology in Canada. At the moment, the museum will receive a real healing care. These important works will end in 2017, and the museum will reopen just in time for the 150th anniversary of the Confederation. And that will be the case because the project will be on time and on budget. I just want to make sure that's very clear, Alex. Celebrating 150 years as a country means learning about our history and preserving it for future generations. The Canada Science and Technology Museum is a perfect example of preserving our past and encouraging innovation for the future. As Minister of Canadian Heritage and someone who believes in the power of art as a source of both inspiration and innovation, I really appreciate the museum's focus on science, technology, engineering, arts, and math, so the steam that propels progress. And we're about to see a perfect example of what this steam can produce as we will get a sneak peek of the virtual reality experience in the Moving and Connecting Gallery that will be on display when the museum reopens. But before we give this new technology a try, I must tell you that I'm pleased to officially launch the Canada Science and Technology Museum's new contest. How does science inspire you? And I think we have great examples before us today. I'm quite actually excited about this and not only that, impressed. Yeah, what do you think? This is extremely cool. It involves arts, artists, and young people. And the works produced will be the expression of what science inspires each participant. The young people of all regions of the country, including those among us today, have the opportunity to marry science and art in order to embody the panels that serve the site of innovation. Really, it's really a fantastic project and bravo to the team for having thought about it. Thank you very much. Thank you, Minister Jolie. I would now like to ask Alex Benet to say a few words. He's the president and CEO, and he reacted very well when I told him our team wanted to cover this wall with graffiti. Before starting, I'm happy to report to everyone that we are absolutely on time and on budget. We will have rave reviews in those three sentences or the sentences I tell myself every night before going to bed and every morning before I wake up. This is the rest of the team, frankly. Good morning, I'm happy to be here with you today, Madame Jolie, Christina, Mr. McCormick, Mr. McGinty, and Mr. Prussier. And I especially invite you to hear the students from Public School Queen Elizabeth. Thank you very much for being here today. It's extremely important for us for you to be a part of this process that we are undertaking here at the Canada Science and Technology Museums. The launch of our art contest today is part of an exciting milestone for the museum. As you know, and as you can tell, we're not open right now, and this is the beginning of our renewal for us. This is how we integrate your voices into our project, into your project. Our opening will coincide with the 50th anniversary of the museum and the 150th anniversary of the Confederation of Canada. An anniversary is always a good time to reflect on the past and also to reflect on our future. You being our future, we are here to serve you. We are here to make sure that you inspire us and that we inspire you in pursuing a career in science, technology, engineering, arts, or math. You are our future, so thank you once again. So what you will see in this new museum when we reopen is a completely reimagined interpretation of our uniquely Canadian heritage in science and innovation. It's a thrilling look ahead at what science has in store for us in the future as well. And our collections will be transformed into a truly hands-on experience for all Canadians who visit, both in person and virtually as you'll get to experience with our virtual reality simulation a little bit later. The importance for us is to reach Canadians from coast to coast to coast. The ones that are lucky enough to be here and that get to visit in person is fantastic, but we want to make sure we reach youth and children in all corners of our great country. So I can promise you that every encounter that you and your family will have with the museum will be dynamic, interactive, and fully digital. So this time of renewal is an opportunity to broaden our traditional perspective and on the sources of inspiration for science, exploration, and discovery. And it's for these reasons that the museum has collaborated with House of Paint and its executive director Patrick McCormick. Patrick and his amazing team are going to encourage art instance students in the creation of a series of murals that are going to adorn the hoarding walls during the construction of the new museum and that are going to remain in place until the fall of 2017. So we will go from white to full of colors, as you can see here today. There's going to be three components to the mural. First part will be mural pieces that are designed by local artists and that are going to illustrate what science means to them. There will be a collaborative mural piece that will be created as part of a mentorship program between local artists and local youth. And there's going to be a recreation of the winning submissions from today's contest which is open to students across Canada, by the way. This is what our art contest is about. A celebration of the role that creativity and artists play in the innovation spectrum. The work of each artist on this mural will respond to the question, what inspires you in science? The response shows an evolution and an expansion of our vision to include creative and imaginative forces that feed on scientific innovations. It's also a chance to invite young Canadians, tomorrow's scientists, technology experts and artists to share their ideas with us and to play a role in our transformation. So here's how the contest is going to work because that's what everybody really wants to know about, right? So students between the ages of four and nineteen are going to be invited to submit a mural design through our website that illustrates how science inspires them. Submissions can be made individually or on behalf of a student class or a community group. The winning artwork is going to become part of the mural project that House of Paint is going to lead. So the contest section of the wall will showcase the winners by categories so by age and by popular vote. So the winners of each of the five categories will be selected at a technological price of $1,000 in the name of their school or community organization. In addition, the winners' names will be displayed on the website of the museum and each of them will receive a grant from House of Paint on the mural. When it is completed, what you will see is a depiction of our new vision for the museum, a place where science and arts meet, where inspiration translates into innovation. So I'm confident that our renewed museum on time and on budget will be a focal point for every Canadian interested in the sciences to explore both their rich heritage and their promising future, which we all share. So thank you very much for joining us today. Thank you very much. Thank you, Alex. When our team first started looking at this project, we quickly recognized it wasn't something we could do alone and so we decided we needed to find somebody locally that we could work with and I want to introduce you to that person and his team who will be overseeing the creation of the murals. Patrick McCormick is the executive director of the House of Paint, an Ottawa-based organization known for its festival of urban arts and culture, a hip-hop and urban arts event that takes place annually in Ottawa. Patrick has a personality in the field of the Ottawa Arts. He has supported and produced numerous artistic and graffiti projects, including the recent embellishment of the English-English church on the Benk Street in Ottawa. House of Paint has also implemented a few projects for the German embassy. Please join me in welcoming Patrick McCormick. All right. Well, thanks everyone for coming out. Thank you very much, Christina. It's an honor to be here to represent House of Paint and Ottawa's urban arts community. And also to represent Queen Elizabeth Public School. I am a grad. I won't say of what year, but it was quite some time ago. Actually, Queenie was my second school in Ottawa. I began at York Street Public, but only for like the last three weeks of grade seven when I moved here and did my grade eight year at Queenie. It's really good to see the young people from Queenie out here getting involved in this project. It's a really great look. I also wanted to mention that it's really an honor to be here personally and representing House of Paint as a connector in the community, just thinking about the different organizations that exist here and how we're able to be in the middle and connect our local arts community with youth from our community and with the support of the museum and Canadian heritage. It's really a great thing that we can be in the middle and help support a growing and thriving arts community and at the same time link that into other institutions that are so important for the development of our arts community for our young people and for our society in general. So I just wanted to mention that it's a great honor to represent House of Paint and to have the ability to connect all these different organizations and individuals to make a project like this happen. So when we think about the intersection of art and science, I was thinking about what am I going to say here? But then I thought hip-hop as far as an art form in a culture is really a great illustration of how innovation and new technology can help foster new art forms. So when we talk about the music aspects of hip-hop, very closely tied to the innovation of vinyl records and turntables. Without the turntable, the mixer and the vinyl record, hip-hop music and then in turn popular music as we know it today would not have existed. So it was with those instruments that the DJs began doing things like scratching, looping and then they really rewrote the history of popular music using these implements and then technology went further and the process has changed. But now we have the art of turntableism which a lot of people would equate to the playing of an instrument. So that's just one kind of example and then something that really kind of touches close to this project is the innovation of the spray can, spray paint can. Without the spray paint can, we would not have modern graffiti art. So we really see within all the elements and I could go further into the other elements of hip-hop culture and the art forms that we practice but we generally see that through those examples that that's a really good kind of living modern contemporary illustration of how technology and science really plays a role in influencing art and art can then push back to science and technology and ask for new innovation to help create the art that the artists want to communicate. So that's just a small example. And then as we move into the digital era now we have software that can emulate all of these things that we used to use all these different media for. Now it's moving into software and we're able to recreate so many of these things just through software emulation. So it's exciting to, you know, it's a great time as I guess software and emulation is moving so quickly. I think that's a huge part of science and technology and how that's relating to art and that's really the new frontier for a lot of people practicing so many different arts practices. So we have three kind of, I guess, steps to the mural and Alex touched on that a bit but I guess I'll get into it a bit more. The first component is that local artists have submitted in a call for proposals. So you will see most of the middle segment of the wall will be covered with murals that local artists from our community have basically been working on behind the scenes up till now and the painting will start actually on Monday. So that's a huge thing. The second component is the youth mentorship component and we actually have the two mentors and artists in the house right now so I'd just like to give them a shout out. We have Dominique Bovenue and Calcadana Sefa. They're at the back and they're really great people. They've worked with House of Pain before. They have a lot of great experience working with young people and really excited to have them on board. So that's going to get started as early as Monday and then the final component which is the reason for today is the launch of the national contest and I'm really excited that we, I was a surprise. I saw on the notes yesterday that we'd have some students from Queenie out so I think that's great as a launch for the contest. It's a great tie-in and just to reiterate people can enter the contest. Classes or individual students or community groups can enter the contest through the museum website and upload their submissions and it's really important to remember to keep your original artwork for anyone who's maybe pushing those messages out there to remind folks to keep their original artwork because we may need that in the translation process to make sure that their artwork is, we do it justice when we translate it to the walls of the museum. So that's, I guess it opens today and it closes on the 20th I believe, am I correct with that, of May. So we have like the 20th till the 20th to go and that's the duration of the project. We really look forward to inviting everybody out to translate those final winners of the contest onto the mural wall. We'll have a community jam which will be led by more of our local artists in our community and we'll get people out here. Hopefully we'll have some great weather like today. We'll have some tunes playing. We'll probably have some b-boys and b-girls doing some dance demonstrations, a little picnic and we'll get the community out and we'll collaboratively paint those winners of the national contest onto the section of the walls over here. So really looking forward to that I think we can encourage everyone to come back out for that. We'll release some more information about that when the time comes up. So I'd just like to thank everyone involving House of Pain in this for being here today. I'd like to thank the students and the staff from Queen E for being part of this because I really want to big that up. Special shout out to Queen Elizabeth Public School. And yeah, I'd like to thank definitely all the staff at the museum for reaching out and getting House of Pain involved in this. I think it's a great way to show solidarity between our national institutions that we have here in Ottawa and our local arts community. So thank you very much and everyone have a great day. Thank you Patrick. He'll tell us all about the way science will inspire the participants of the contest. Finally, I also wish good luck to the students here who are ready to submit their drawing. We would now be happy to take questions from the media. We have a microphone here at the back from a member of the media. If you could please identify yourself and to whom your question is directed. So we have a microphone here at the back for the media. Please introduce yourself as well as the person to whom you would like to ask your question. Please keep your question to one question to follow up. Would you like to keep your question? Two questions only. Thank you. That was easy. That was easy. I think I'm going to ask you a question. Go ahead. First, on today's event for Mr. Can you tell us a little bit what is the idea behind this contest for the young French-English people for CBC Radio Canada? Yes, absolutely. The big idea for us is that we are in a community in which we are proud to be. We believe that we have a good representation of the country and the youth. Through the country, we are in an environment where there are people who come from all over the world who are a very good representation of the country. So we wanted to find a way to involve people in a creative aspect to be able to bring out a little bit of the cultural influence we have within our community and within our country. So in English, we're in an area of town that we are extremely happy to be in because of the multiculturalism aspect. We feel that this is a neighbourhood that represents the true values of Canada and we wanted to get a way to get some of that multiculturalism out from our youth and participating into what is their museum ultimately because we are an institution that takes great pride in youth engagement as well. So what better way than to have them participate and show their creativity and the biggest stage we have currently and the other part of this is our wall when we're done will be a projectable surface as well. So we clearly anticipate continuing to do some of this work on the digital projection when we're done as well as an engagement for youth. So. Thank you. I have a question for the Prime Minister. Jolie, you told us that we were talking about 2017 the opening. There are a lot of events that are linked to 2017. Mosaics and culture, where are we? Two months ago, you told us that the announcement was imminent. Yes. The financing will be announced when? I'm happy to announce that there is a financing of 5 million that will be given to us. For us, it is important that the project is accessible and therefore our financing is linked to the fact that the project is accessible and therefore free to the population. Thank you. Hello. I guess this concludes the event. Thank you very much. We're now going to move to... So for the media, you're certainly welcome now to take photos in front of the hoarding wall and with the students who are also available for one-on-one interviews. In just a few moments, it will be important for us as Ministers Joliet towards the beta version of the museum's new virtual reality locomotive experience. Thank you, everyone. Have a great afternoon.