18-27 SEPTEMBER 2026
The 2026 Sechelt Arts Festival brings together artists to consider stories of Rising Waters. As a Festival dedicated to connecting art to local ecologies, this year’s theme emerges from the real transformations that we are witnessing in our communities, and along the vast shorelines that connect us. Atmospheric rivers, coastal flooding, melting snow-caps and warmer climates have become common, shared and recurrent experiences. And in the midst of these narratives of catastrophe and grief, artists as storytellers are helping us think with these rising waters.
In celebrating the Autumnal Equinox, the Festival will bring together artists across performance, theatre, dance, film, visual and written arts to center stories that remind us of past receding glaciers, of the new connections brought by coastal flooding, and to future practices that we will adapt into as we experience a wetter and warmer planet.
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Rising Waters
SEPTEMBER 18-27, 2026
As a Festival dedicated to connecting art to local ecologies, this year’s theme emerges from the real transformations that we are witnessing in our communities, and along the vast shorelines that connect us.
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Making Art in a Changing Climate
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 6PM-7:30PM
This lecture and discussion with Dr. Amanda White and Laura Kozak considers how artists and curators are thinking with a rapidly changing climate. -
təm kʷaθ nan (Namesake)
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2PM-4PM
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. -
Exhibition Opening + Festival Reception
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 6PM-8PM
Showcasing the works of Bracken Hanuse Corlett, Jessica Silvey + Robert Joe, Laiwan and other artists. -
How Water Remembers Art Activation + Discussion
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2PM-4PM
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. -
Art Talks: Art and Climate Change
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 5PM-6:30PM
Offered online, they are an opportunity to learn, share and discuss wide ranging topics that intersect with making art at this moment in time.
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Art Talks: Making with the Salish Sea
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 5PM-6:30PM
Threading theory, practice and art, these discussions will provide a chance to delve into ideas, unpack understandings, and challenge assumptions.
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Salish Sea and Me with Talaysay Tours
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 2PM-3:30PM
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. Guided by Candace Campo.
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Keepers of the Salish Sea
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 4PM-6PM
Join us for a one-night only event in collaboration with Holy Crow Arts Society with Squamish Nation playwright Justin Neal. The play is about finding that path we all seek, a search for meaning in life, to discover answers to existential questions
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Salish Sea and Me with Talaysay Tours
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2PM-3:30PM
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.
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Stories of Rising Waters
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 6PM-8PM
Rita Wong, Bella Casey, Tara Blasco and Wanda Nowicki sharE their yarning with water. From poetry, music and storytelling, to spoken work and play reading, each weaves joy, hope, anger, distress and possibility, inviting us to be with the complex emotions of climate grief and loss.
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