Legal · terms of use

A plan, written down in public.

Capital Cultures is an organising team building a multicultural festival for Ottawa. The festival has not been held. This page sets out what that means for anything you read here, what happens when you send us a form, what you may do with the material on these pages, and where our responsibility ends.

What is a plan and what is settled What an application means

Current as of 29 August 2026 · these terms are rewritten and dated whenever the site gains a function

Five sections · jump to the one you came for

Read the whole site as a plan.

Every description of the festival on these pages is an intention held by a team that is still applying for the permissions to carry it out. That applies to the date, the venue, the programme, the number of pavilions and every service described around them.

The single clause that matters most on this page

Five lines · they hold for every page of this site

01

Settled today

That a team is working on this, in Ottawa, with the intentions written across this site. That every form here reaches a person. That the terms on which we would work with a community, a vendor or a partner are the ones published here.

02

Applied for, and not yet granted

The date, the site at LeBreton Flats, and every permission the City of Ottawa and the National Capital Commission attach to a public event of this size.

03

Depends on money that is not in hand

The scale of the first edition. The working budget carries a smaller festival; the larger version opens only if confirmed funding clears the threshold at the decision point named on the festival pages.

04

Not asked yet

No community has been signed. No pavilion is confirmed. Any list of communities on this site is a picture of who cooks in Ottawa, and it is never a line-up.

05

Nothing here is a ticket

The site sells nothing today. No admission, no pitch, no sponsorship package changes hands through these pages, and no payment can be taken here.

What sending a form means.

An application starts a conversation. It creates no obligation on either side until both sides sign something that says otherwise, and this is the clause that keeps that plain a year before anybody signs anything.

Every intake on this site works this way

We answer every application. That is the promise the intake pages make, and it is the one we intend to be judged on.
An application binds nobody. Sending one reserves no pitch, no pavilion, no slot and no badge. Withdrawing it takes one message.
Acceptance is a separate step, in writing, naming the terms. A participant agreement is what creates duties, and it is read before it is signed.
Send us what is true. Fees, permits, insurance and food safety in Ontario stand behind the person who holds them, and an application that misstates them is withdrawn when we find out.
What you send stays yours. Photographs and text sent with an application are used to assess it, and to describe the festival only with your say-so.
An application is not a subscription. Letters need their own tick, and it is never ticked for you.

The marketplace, and whose deal it is.

The catalogue opens in spring 2027 as a stage-one shopfront. A seller writes a listing, a buyer reads it and writes back, and the two of them settle the rest between themselves.

Stage one · the full rulebook lives on the marketplace rules page

How the marketplace is planned to grow, and what each stage puts on us.
Stage	What it does	What we take on	When
Shopfront	Catalogue, listing pages, a message that reaches the seller. Deals agreed off this site.	Reading every listing before it appears.	Spring 2027
Requests	Enquiries, their history and a status, inside the participant account.	Answering a dispute between two parties.	After the first festival
Payments	Payment, delivery, refunds, and a commission arriving with them.	Terms of sale, tax handling, refunds, dispute resolution, support.	Year three, if sellers ask for it

The contract is between seller and buyer. Capital Cultures is party to no sale made through this catalogue.
We hold no money, ship nothing, verify no identity, inspect no goods and issue no refunds.
Moderation is our one duty at stage one. A person reads every listing before it appears, and a listing that breaks the rules comes down with the reason in writing.
A check is not an endorsement. It says the listing met the rules on the day it was read, and it carries no opinion about the seller or the goods.
The full rules are a page of their own, and they are the terms a seller agrees to when a shopfront opens.

Read the marketplace rules

Words and pictures on this site.

Some of what is here is ours to license. Some belongs to the communities who wrote it with us. The festival scenes are our own illustrations of a plan, and every page that carries one also carries the line about a date and a venue that wait on permits.

Four kinds of material · each with its own answer

01

The text we wrote

Quote it, teach from it, translate it, and hand a printed copy to your community group. Reprinting a page whole under somebody else's name is the line, and a link back is the courtesy we ask for.

02

Articles written with a community

A community article is co-written and carries the name of the people who signed it off. Their contribution stays theirs, and it is used here with permission and nowhere else without asking them.

03

Pictures

The festival scenes on this site are illustrations of what we are planning, made for these pages. Every one of them shows a festival that has not been held. Presenting one as a photograph, or offering it as documentation that an event took place, falls outside every permission we give. Reusing one anywhere else needs our written permission.

04

The name and the mark

Capital Cultures and its logo identify this project. Using them to describe your own event, product or endorsement needs our agreement first, and partners get a proper kit with the rules in it.

05

What you send us

You keep it. Sending a photograph, a recipe or a story with a form lets us read it and answer you; publishing it needs your yes, asked for separately and in plain words.

Where our responsibility ends.

Written in ordinary sentences, because a wall of capital letters is how organisations hide this section rather than explain it.

Ontario law · Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

The site is offered as it is. We keep it accurate and current, and a page that turns out to be wrong is corrected and dated.
Plans change, and this site changes with them. A date, a venue or a scale described here can move, and moving one carries no liability to anybody who read the earlier version.
Links out belong to other people. A link to a community organisation, a supplier or a news article is not a warranty about what sits at the other end.
A deal made in the marketplace is between its two parties, and the loss from one falls where the two of them agreed it would.
These terms run under the law of Ontario, and a dispute about them belongs in the courts of Ontario. Nothing here removes a right Canadian consumer law gives you.
Terms change on this page. A change is dated at the top, and a change that affects participants goes to the mailing list before it takes effect.

Can I use your festival description in a grant application?

Quote it, and quote the plan language with it — the date and the venue are subject to permits, and a funder reading a firmer claim than we make is a problem for both of us. Write to us and we will send you what is confirmed as of that week.

May I reuse the pictures?

Credit Capital Cultures. The scenes illustrate a festival that has not happened yet, so republishing one as documentation of an event would be wrong.

I run a business. Can I say I am a partner?

Once there is an agreement saying so. Partner conversations start on the partner page, and the material to describe the relationship comes with the agreement.

What if the festival does not happen?

Then the site says so, on the day we know. Nobody has paid us anything, no ticket exists and no pitch has been sold, which is a deliberate feature of running the first year this way.

Do these terms exist in French?

The French mirror is in preparation and includes this page. Until it publishes, a question in French to the contact address is answered in French.

Legal · three pages and a map

The rest of the legal shelf.

Something here reads wrong?

Tell us which line and why. A term that confuses a reader is a term that fails at its job.

Write to us Read the privacy notice