We invite you to join us for a walk along the shoreline of ch’atlich to celebrate the many life-giving attributes and rich resources that the ocean has provided Coast Salish peoples since time immemorial. Each Salish Sea and Me experience will be a conversation with the shoreline; a meeting between land, water, and the people who have walked here for generations. Guided by Candace Campo, you’ll explore the rich ecosystems of the Salish Sea, learning how Indigenous communities have lived in balance with these tides for millennia.
Tag: festival
Sechelt Arts Festival: Exhibition Opening + Festival Reception: Bracken Hanuse Corlett, Jessica Silvey + Robert Joe, Laiwan and others
Up and down the pacific northwest coast there are stories shared of the great flood. They speak about the rising waters, the urgency to escape to higher ground and coming down to start over again after the water recedes. In my home community, Wuikinuxv, it is said the People who survived the flood climbed the mountain known as Kvauma (seat of the eagle) to escape the push of the ocean water. In making a lot of the work for this show I was thinking about the art we make and the work we do after loss…after a series of losses. What happens when catastrophe and heartbreak are normalized in our bones? Where do we place focus? Do we look at what has been taken, or to what remains and can be reclaimed?
Sechelt Arts Festival: How Water Remembers Art Activation + Discussion
Join us for an activation and discussion of Laiwan’s How Water Remembers, a multi-part artistic project that aims to build awareness and cultural value in developing sustainable ecologies for humans and biodiversity. By increasing ecological biodiversity, scientists believe we can slow down global warming and also increase protections against future pandemics. How Water Remembers encourages a vision of a more livable city with sensitive landscape architecture that enhances biodiversity, while respecting our interconnected livelihood with the many diverse critters whose habitats may be currently endangered.
We will play The Divination Game that invites us to embody the qualities of the inhabitants of mudflats. The first 5 participants will receive an artist edition.
September 20, 2pm-4pm
Sechelt Arts Festival: Art Talks: Making with the Salish Sea (online)
We are bringing back Art Talks, a series of discussions that centre on issues and ideas connected to contemporary art in the 21st century. Offered online they are an opportunity to learn, share and discuss wide ranging topics that intersect with making art at this moment in time. Threading theory, practice and art, these discussions will provide a chance to delve into ideas, unpack understandings, and challenge assumptions. In the second session we will consider artists, projects and practices around the Salish Sea, and how they help connect audiences to specific sites of climate transformation.
Sechelt Arts Festival: Salish Sea and Me with Talaysay Tours
We invite you to join us for a walk along the shoreline of ch’atlich to celebrate the many life-giving attributes and rich resources that the ocean has provided Coast Salish peoples since time immemorial. Each Salish Sea and Me experience will be a conversation with the shoreline; a meeting between land, water, and the people who have walked here for generations. Guided by Candace Campo, you’ll explore the rich ecosystems of the Salish Sea, learning how Indigenous communities have lived in balance with these tides for millennia. Coast Salish peoples have shared a profound and enduring connection with the Salish Sea for thousands of years, a relationship that has shaped a beautiful culture, identity and way of life.
Sechelt Arts Festival: Play Reading: Keepers of the Salish Sea
Join us for a one-night only event in collaboration with Holy Crow Arts Society. Squamish Nation playwright Justin Neal explores the tradition of canoeing in Keepers of the Salish Sea. The play is about finding that path we all seek, a search for meaning in life, to discover answers to existential questions. A probing, searching, hilarious tale infusing Coast Salish traditions — inspired by a phenomenal cultural practice thousands of years old, nearly erased by colonization — with the pressing environmental and social issues of our day. The stage reading is directed by Quelemia Sparrow.
Sechelt Arts Festival: Art Talks: Art & Climate Change (online)
We are bringing back Art Talks, a series of discussions that centre on issues and ideas connected to contemporary art in the 21st century. Offered online, they are an opportunity to learn, share and discuss wide ranging topics that intersect with making art at this moment in time. Threading theory, practice and art, these discussions will provide a chance to delve into ideas, unpack understandings, and challenge assumptions. In this first session, we will look at artists and practices that consider a changing climate with a particular focus on our warming oceans.
Sechelt Arts Festival: Film Screening: təm kʷaθ nan (Namesake)
When the Tla’amin Nation asks its neighbouring city to reconsider its name, a community confronts history, identity, and the meaning of reconciliation in everyday life.
Sechelt Arts Festival: Public Talk: Making Art in a Changing Climate with Dr. Amanda White and Laura Kozak
This lecture and discussion considers how artists and curators are thinking with a rapidly changing climate. How can art provide a space for more than contemplation and awareness, towards the possibility of transformation? What creative forms and material responses invite us to consider art as a site for urgent action?
Sunshine Coast Art Crawl
Take a free, self-directed tour and discover the vibrant arts community of the Sunshine Coast!
The Art Crawl returns this year with 186 venues spanning from Gambier Island to Earls Cove and Egmont, showcasing an incredible range of artists, studios, galleries and other unique locations.
Over three days, meet the artists, explore their creative spaces, and experience the unique spirit of the Coast through painting, pottery, glass, woodwork, textiles, photography, jewelry, and much more.
Whether you’re a seasoned collector or simply curious, the Crawl offers something for everyone. Come explore, connect, and discover the creativity that makes the Sunshine Coast so special!
GPAG: New Stories with Annie Frazier Henry
She’s is an award-winning Indigenous writer, filmmaker and musician. She and her company, Full Regalia, have produced over 30 dramatic, documentary and experimental films, which have screened Internationally. A recipient of the “Trailblazer” award, “her films have has served as a springboards & inspiration for countless other projects”. She works as creative and production consultant, and produced student films. She was the first aboriginal person to sit on the jury at Sundance Film Festival & several of her films have had US premiers there.
She currently has several projects in development. Her short films have had a renaissance of screenings, to include the acclaimed “Ladies of the Inlet.”
She’s had over 15 short stories published. She is honoured to have her ‘Henry Miller’ short story “don’tcha know” published in NEXUS the International Henry Miller Anthology, about her time with him.
GPAG: Self-Publishing Success Stories
Doris Good, M.J. Milne, and Pat Sullivan share their self-publishing tips for creating and marketing self-published books from cover to cover.
GPAG: Showcase of Book Awards for BC Authors Finalists
Come listen to readings from the finalists from the Book Awards for BC Authors contest, including:
– Daniela Elza
– Marion Dodds
– Veronica Woodruff
– Joline Martin
– Calvin White
– Susan McCaslin
GPAG: AI is Here, Are We Ready: A Panel Discussion
AI Awareness for Bloggers, Artists, Authors & Others
with panelists: Doris Good, CPA and Author, Hilary Moses, Artist, Educator, and Animator, Ruth Rodgers, Artist and Author, Stephen Murphy, Artist, Author, and Bookbinder, and Stephen Smith, Blogger, and AI programmer.
GPAG: Keep It Simple and Loose – Urban/Travel Sketching for Beginners Pluse
Plein Air Workshop at Art & Words Festival.
Keep it Simple and Loose – Urban / travel sketching for beginners plus with Paddy Meade
Enjoy a 2 hour plein air sketching in the core of lower Gibsons. Pencil, markers, crayons, watercolour – bring what you have. Paint in sketchbook or on paper. Instructor will supply boards to use on lap, table, curb etc. Easel not required.
Focus is on the basic tips for urban sketching and opportunity to learn how to select subject, basic composition, and fun opportunity to create. Keep it simple and loose.
Saturday, Aug. 22, 10:30 – 12:30
Gibsons Public Art Gallery, $25
Register by email at sunshinecoastwritersandeditors@gmail.com
GPAG: Penning the Paragraph: Prose Poetry Playshop with Isabella Mori
Whether you’re a poet or write prose only, you’ll enjoy this highly interactive workshop. We’ll ditch the lines and write beautiful/interesting/shocking/strange sentences, and like Tom Snarsky and Amy Lowell before us, compose poetic paragraphs.
2: 3:0-4:00, Saturday, Aug. 22, Gibsons Public Art Gallery
$25
Sign up by emailing sunshinecoastwritersandeditors@gmail.com
GPAG: Arts & Words Festival 2026
Join us with the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society for the 2026 Arts and Words Festival, a three day literary festival in which writers collaborate with visual artists!
Every year, artists and writers on the Sunshine Coast are randomly paired together. Working together they reflect on each other’s stories, artistic practices, styles, and bodies of work to create a literary work and a visual work that resonate with and echo each other; often resulting in long-term friendship and collaboration across artistic disciplines. We invite all to join us during this festival to view the huge breadth of art and words on display, as well as for workshops, keynote speakers, interviews, and more. Immerse yourself in the Sunshine Coast’s literary and visual arts scene.
Find the full schedule of events, as well as our opening hours during the festival, online!
Far From Home – Book Launch with Ruth Rodgers
Join author and artist, Ruth Rodgers, for the launch of her latest historical fiction novel at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery as she presents this latest story about the thousands of ‘home children’ sent out from England to Canada to fulfill agricultural and domestic service roles in the 1870s to the 1930s. Joseph and Lucy, orphans from London, experience very different fates in their new homes, typical of the stories of many of those caught up in this ill-considered scheme designed to solve Canada’s labour shortage while getting children off the streets of England’s growing cities.
Saturday, August 22, 2026, 11 AM – 12:30 PM
Gibsons Public Art Gallery
Free