Eastside Arts Society

The Eastside Arts Society is home to the wildly popular Eastside Culture Crawl Visual Arts, Design & Crafts Festival, the CREATE! Arts Festival and the Eastside Arts District.

The EAS develops and produces some of Vancouver’s most innovative and cherished programming for contemporary visual arts. Started in 1996, the EAS is embarking on a number of initiatives to ensure that Art Happens Here, on Vancouver’s Eastside, for decades to come.

Eastside Culture Crawl

Vancouver's Eastside Culture Crawl is an annual visual arts festival in November that involves 500+ artists on Vancouver's Eastside opening their studio to audiences of 40,000+. The event is focused on the area bounded by Columbia Street, First Ave, Victoria Drive, and the Waterfront and involves painters, jewellers, sculptors, furniture makers, weavers, potters, printmakers, photographers, glassblowers, and more; from emerging artists to those internationally established. This open artist studio event, along with workshops, demonstrations, curated exhibits and artist talks, increases understanding and appreciation of the many varied visual art practices in our cities Eastside. The Crawl, as it is affectionately known, is an accessible and exciting experience for art lovers and first-time visitors alike. 2023 Culture Crawl open studios takes place November 16th-19th. Check the website for more details at culturecrawl.ca.

The Create! Arts Festival

The CREATE! Arts Festival is a multi-day, interactive and exciting art-making event this summer, bringing together local artists and the community to explore, learn, and create outdoors in Strathcona Park, and in Eastside art studios. Attendees of all ages and abilities learn how to create visual art such as print making, glass fusing, ceramics and painting, as well as explore performing arts such as Salish singing and story-telling in ticketed workshops taught by Eastside artists in a beautiful, centrally located outdoor space. Attendees get to enjoy the Arts Zone featuring public-participation art as well as art demonstrations, the Festival Art Shop, a selection of food trucks, and a fully licensed site with beer, cider and wine from Strange Fellows Brewing. See createartsfestival.ca for more information.