CREATE! Eastside Arts Festival expands across disciplines for fourth year of summer arts programming
Esther Rausenberg reflects on the festival’s origins as it diversifies its outdoor arts-workshop programming with concerts, a beer garden, and more
CREATE! Eastside Arts Festival. Photo by Wendy D
Eastside Arts Society presents CREATE! Eastside Arts Festival from July 22 to 28 in Strathcona Park and across the Eastside Arts District
WHEN STIR ASKS the Eastside Arts Society’s artistic and executive director Esther Rausenberg what her vision was for the first-ever CREATE! Eastside Arts Festival back in 2021, she responds over the phone with a bout of thunderous laughter.
“The vision,” Rausenberg says with a final chuckle, “was that we would have a park full of people who were engaging in and creating art. But it was also the first year of the pandemic. So that’s why I laughed, because I go, ‘Oh, right, let’s launch a brand-new festival during the first year of a pandemic’, of which we knew so little of at that particular time. But I have to say, it was kind of interesting, because we sold out.”
With many of those early-day safety protocols, business shutdowns, and travel restrictions still in place, options for arts offerings in the city were slim. The society’s annual Eastside Culture Crawl, which drew some 45,000 visitors to over 500 artist studios in 2019, was forced to pivot to virtual programming in 2020, along with hundreds of other indoor events and festivals. Arts organizations in the city were left rethinking how best to offer programming during a time of uncertainty.
But the seed for the CREATE! Eastside Arts Festival was actually planted years before the pandemic, when Rausenberg and her team noticed that Culture Crawl visitors were starting to inquire about where they could attempt a hand at different artforms themselves, like ceramics, indigo dyeing, or painting. So Rausenberg and the Eastside Arts Society conceptualized an annual event where folks could try out their skills in short-form workshops, all led by local artists and craft makers. It was intended as a way for arts-curious individuals to experience new disciplines without having to sign up for a months-long course.
And while it may seem ironic (even to Rausenberg) that the Eastside Arts Society chose to kick things off in the thick of the COVID swirl, ultimately, it ended up being the right decision.
“Because it was outdoors, it was an activity that people could attend,” Rausenberg says of the inaugural CREATE! Eastside Arts Festival, which takes place in Strathcona Park and across the Eastside Arts District each year. “We could control how many people were at a table, so there wasn’t direct contact.… So we literally sold out of everything. It was absolutely shocking.”
Esther Rausenberg. Photo by Wendy D
The next two years, the weekend-long festival successfully returned to Strathcona Park (though Rausenberg notes that ticket sales dipped down a bit once the city’s full breadth of arts programming opened back up post-COVID).
But for its fourth-annual edition, CREATE! is now expanding to a full-week affair from July 22 to 28. Along with its usual all-day workshop programming in the park, the festival will feature live music and dance, a beer garden, and public-art activations. Among the highlights are pop-up art workshops at Off the Rail Brewing, Luppolo Brewing, and Strange Fellows Brewing; a roving performance by Mascall Dance; a live mural painting by Eastside Culture Crawl cofounder Richard Tetrault; and a free mainstage concert lineup presented with 604 Records and Light Organ Records, featuring Haleluya Hailu, Fur Trade, and Sarah Jane Scouten.
A variety of studios across East Vancouver are also opening their doors to the public for workshops and demonstrations, and there will of course be the ninth annual Art! Bike! Beer! Crawl brewery tour fundraiser on July 27.
“The arts are so important in terms of our mental health, wealth, and wellbeing,” Rausenberg says. “And because we’re challenged in so many ways in our personal lives trying to get through the month and pay rent, given the cost of living and food here and literally across Canada, I think now more than ever the arts are that much more critical and vital. As to whether we can continue to deliver that is a whole other question—and then, can people afford it, is the other thing. That’s equally a difficult challenge for us.”
Indigo dyeing at the 2023 CREATE! Eastside Arts Festival. Photo by Wendy D
Expanding CREATE!’s programming aligns with the Eastside Arts Society’s longterm goal of establishing a formal Eastside Arts District, explains Rausenberg. The district would act as a united organization with stable funding and facilities for every inch of East Van’s arts and culture network, from theatres to breweries. This would in turn ensure that arts programming is more financially accessible and readily available to folks in the city.
Part of the festival’s evolution also involves collaborating with more community partners and presenters; for instance, there are shows taking place at both the Firehall Arts Centre and Rickshaw Theatre this year.
“As we develop the Eastside Arts District and that’s starting to become more of a reality, we also want to ensure that we’re not just representing visual artists,” Rausenberg says, “and that we’re including performing artists, choreographers and dancers, and musicians. We’re really extending that outward, and ensuring inclusivity of all these other different art disciplines. So this is really the tip of the iceberg, and the beginning of promoting the many and varied arts and performance groups and individuals that we have in this part of the city.” 
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