Mission
To present a free, high-caliber, community festival focused on art, ecology and climate change.
The Sechelt Arts Festival connects art to considerations of climate change and environmental justice. We seek to present a high-level Festival that will place Sechelt as a leader in the regional festival ecology. From music, dance, theater, exhibitions, performances and film screenings, to lectures, discussions and hands-on activities, we envision an intergenerational Festival that draws our community into engaged and inspiring ideas around biodiversity, climate activism and creative making.
2025: Sinku (open water)
In 2025, with Sinku as our companion, the Festival will bring forward ideas and stories that are uniquely and deeply connected to our lands, air and waters, with a focus on the “Trail Bay” waterfront, from the gravel belt to the rocks at Snickett Park. Sinku is the she shashishalhem word for “open water”, or what we commonly call the Salish Sea today. From September 19 – 28 we will host an interdisciplinary festival that includes film screenings, a keynote lecture, a digital heritage project, an ecological field school, hands-on workshops, youth-focused climate action theatre, an exhibition, and a thematic community procession on the autumnal equinox culminating in a large-scale waterfront concert.
Beginning in 2024, under the guidance of the Sunshine Coast Arts Council, the Sechelt Arts Festival connects art, ecology and climate change. We envision art as a means of calling attention to relationships – to our local ecologies, to our companion communities, and to the land, air and waters that make this part of the world so remarkable and unique. Art has the ability to help us think through difficult ideas through play, joy, community and belonging. It is in dance, theatre and music that we are able to move through and with ideas; it is through the language of visual art that we are able to give form; and it is through words and texts that we shape sometimes incomprehensible ideas. And for many, the climate and our changing natural environment is one of those ideas. The Festival seeks to weave together environmental, cultural and social ideas as a means of inspiring our communities.
Since its inaugural year in 2004, the Sechelt Arts Festival has become a leading local platform for engaging the Sunshine Coast artistic community in innovative visual and performing art projects.
Festival Mandate
Connecting Art, Local Ecologies and Climate Change
The Sechelt Arts Festival provides accessible arts programming to all residents of the District of Sechelt and area, showcasing local talent to residents and visitors in a professionally produced event. The Festival supports and encourages Sunshine Coast artists by providing opportunities for collaboration among the multi-talented coast arts community and embraces all art forms, including dance, music, theatre, heritage, and the visual arts.
Art has the ability to help us think through difficult ideas through play, joy, community and belonging. It is in dance, theatre and music that we are able to move through and with ideas; it is through the language of visual art that we are able to give form; and it is through words and texts that we shape sometimes incomprehensible ideas. And for many, the climate and our changing natural environment is one of those ideas. The Festival seeks to weave together environmental, cultural and social ideas as a means of inspiring our communities.
2025 Curatorial Committee:
Sadira Rodrigues, Jessica Silvey, Gerardo Avila, Arwen MacDonald
