Local Arts

Local fairs and festivals converged during Aug. 17 to 20, marking an apex weekend in the Sunshine Coast’s cultural calendar. As book aficionados gathered at the 41st annual Sunshine Coast Festival of the Written Arts, campers and rockers congregated in Wilson Creek for the 8th annual Rogue Fest. 

The Art & Words Festival, organized by the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society, this year grew to include a race for book awards that drew involvement from publishers across the country.

Matthew Douglas, a teenage UBC political science student and graduate of Chatelech Secondary School, completed a solo bicycle crossing from Vancouver to Halifax just before the summer solstice. The trip took 46 days of peddling, including a few days’ rest in Montreal.

Three weeks ago, the Squamish Ocean Canoe Family loaded their seagoing canoe and began a voyage over the Salish Sea to lands of the Muckleshoot Tribe in Washington State.

What's coming up in the arts and culture scene on the Sunshine Coast

‘It’s like a temple for the community’

The harmony between three simultaneous exhibitions at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery surprised even the artists themselves.

Andrea Villanueva, a Grade 12 student at Chatelech Secondary School and a dancer with Sechelt’s Coast Academy of Dance and Performing Arts, was selected to attend last month’s Liberate Artists workshops after appearing in the Star Talent dance competition in Burnaby this spring. Connor Dixon, a Grade 11 student at Elphinstone Secondary and a performer with the Gibsons Dance Centre, earned his way during another Star Talent contest in Langley. 

The second-annual Art and Words Festival launches this weekend, Creek Daze is Sunday and Sechelt and Gibsons music series continue

‘If most grunge is nihilistic…then we could be described as existential grunge’