Your guide to the city elections (an upcoming zine series)

01 Jul, 2026

I'm working with Synapcity on a series a zines for the upcoming city election!

We have one zine in the works already. In May, we hosted a workshop at the Carlington Community Health Centre and talked with attendees about their vision for the election, what they want to see in Ottawa. We're still working on the final draft of the first zine that combines the work from the workshop, but I'm already working on phase two!

When Ottawa residents go to the polls in October, we'll be voting for the mayor we want to see leading the city, the city councillor we want to represent our neighbourhood, and a school board trustee. The mayoral candidate get a lot of hype and attention, so this zine series will focus on the ward councillor candidates to give voters more information about who is running to represent them for the next four year on city council.

In the second phase of our election zine project, we're making a mini zine for EVERY ward in the city to spotlight the councillor candidates on the ballot. By early September, we should have everything ready to go to be distributed across the city!

For our ward-by-ward zines, I want to bring more people into the collaboration. I'm looking for people who want to help design the cover art, so each ward can have their own unique design.

What you need to know

• The zines will be printed in black and white.
• The pages will be 4.25 by 5.5 inches, but with the lettering, your artwork will have to be more like 3 by 4 inches.
• When you're signed up, I'll send you the template cover I've drafted and you can add your artwork to the page.
• For the subject-matter, pick something that reflects your ward, like an iconic place, festival, or landmark. I'm thinking something like the Carp fairgrounds for West Carleton-March Ward or Ottawa's Chinatown Arch for Somerset Ward.
• Artists will also send their socials or website and a brief bio (one sentence) for the back of the zine so readers can find more of you and your art.
• Artists will have until August 21st¹ to send me their art so there's time for us to work on the layout and get everything prepped for printing in September!
• This opportunity is unpaid

You can sign up for any ward, but I would love to match artists with the ward they lived in if possible! If you don't know your ward, you can check out this website from the city and enter your address.

If you're interested, send me an email with your ward and your idea for the illustration. If the ward you lived in is already chosen by another artists (see the table below), pick another one you'd like to take on.

Ward-by-ward zines