Feature image credit: Bard on the Beach; Becky Verbruggen
Summer has arrived, and with it, even more reasons to get out of your house and engage with the local creative community! Whether you’re taking in a bit of Shakespeare with a waterfront view, or you’re getting a sampling of opera’s most notable works in Deer Lake Park, there are countless ways to broaden your horizons this month. And with the longer days here at last, you can push your curfew to include the many outdoor community events on the horizon. This is your guide to scroll through and make your own art crawl around Metro Vancouver and Whistler, there’s no better time for it!
Looking for more? Click here for our events calendar!
Whistler Multicultural Festival | Whistler
June 6, 2025
A community favourite tradition since kicking off in 2013, this celebration of local cultures is filled with performances, interactive workshops, and plenty of food. Take in exhilarating martial arts demonstrations, hone your brushwork with a calligraphy class or just sit back and savour some Vietnamese salad rolls. There’s no end to how you can enjoy this vibrant community event!
Credit: Whistler Multicultural Festival
Artists for Peace | Surrey
June 7, 2025
A celebration of World Oceans Day, this lively evening of music, dance, and live painting epitomizes expression for a good cause. The event will also benefit environmental youth leadership, so you can expect an infectious energy among the diverse crowd in attendance.
Bard on the Beach 2025 | Vancouver
June 10 – Sep 20, 2025
One of Metro Vancouver’s most enduring summer traditions, Bard on the Beach, returns with four new stagings from the catalogue of Stratford’s most famous playwright. This year, you can catch Much Ado About Nothing, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised] [again], and The Dark Lady. Just off the shore of False Creek, enter their famous big top tent for a local experience unlike any other!
Credit: Bard on the Beach
Arts in the Garden 2025 | Vancouver’s North Shore
June 14 – 15, 2025
An annual family-friendly event celebrating the connection between art and nature, Arts in the Garden invites visitors to explore multiple unique locations across the North Shore. Dig into their vibrant event schedule and you’ll find visual art exhibitions, live musical performances, interactive workshops, and engaging activities that foster creativity, cultural exchange, and reflection on our relationship with the environment.
Credit: North Van Arts | 2022 Arts in the garden – Delphia Johnstone’s garden; artwork by the Students of Mandy Boursicot
Opera on a Sunday Afternoon | Burnaby
June 22, 2025
Not sure if opera is your thing? With this continuing performance series at the Shadbolt Centre, you can get a taste of several famous opera scenes performed by a collection of talented actors/singers. The pieces will be performed in English and will include notable arias, duets, and trios…you might be surprised by how many you recognize!
Credit: City of Burnaby
Ongoing Events
Colourwork by Angela Teng | Vancouver
Until June 9
Presented at the Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel in Coal Harbour, this Equinox Gallery exhibition spotlights the renowned artist known for using paint in surprising ways. After squeezing and drying lengths of different coloured paints into thin strips that approximate yarn, Teng uses a single hook to crochet the paint into rectangular and square compositions. Her unique pieces are definitely a sight to behold in person!
Credit: Equinox Gallery
Sit Still | Surrey
Until June 30
In Sit Still, exhibiting artists Arshi Chadha and Collin Patrick explore the tensions between the mandated stillness of the Black body and the urgency, negotiations, and movements that comprise the Black experience. With their photography practice, each artist ponders the politics of neutrality and the extended uses of self-representation through gesture, abstraction, and physical interventions.
Credit: The Black Arts Centre
Art in the Hall: Golya Mirderikvand | Vancouver’s North Shore
Until July 23
Exhibiting at the Municipal Hall in West Vancouver, this collection of paintings presents nature scenes within a deep and detailed focus. Capturing intricate networks of branches—whether through the canopies they form or the shadows they cast, Golya Mirderikvand’s work experiments with light and shadow while zooming in on compositions that balance abstraction and realism.
Credit: Ferry Building Gallery
Distance Between Objects, Time Between Events | Vancouver
Until Sep 7
Lindsay McIntyre engages filmmaking as a material practice. For over two decades, she has experimented with manipulating the properties of celluloid, creating a diverse body of films grounded in labour, collaboration and process. Working between documentary, experimental film and expanded cinema performance, McIntyre’s oeuvre reflects on displacement from Inuit Nunangat, place- and land-based methodologies, Inuit community, and survivance, often in conversation with her family history.
Credit: Contemporary Art Gallery | Lindsay McIntyre, qulliq, 2025. Courtesy of the artist
Continuous Fractures Generating New Yields | Vancouver
Until Sep 7
Since 2016, New York-based artist collective CFGNY has investigated the transnational circulation of style, addressing a constellation of aesthetics across architecture, contemporary fashion, historical collecting practices, and cultures of cuteness. In Continuous Fractures Generating New Yields, the group presents a new body of porcelain sculptures cast from the imprints of cheap household objects manufactured in China, reflecting on the effects and cultural politics of imported Chinese goods.
Credit: Contemporary Art Gallery | Consolidated in Relation, Maroon Blue (1 Jar, 1 Tank Top, 2 Bowls, 5 Vases) (detail), 2022. Courtesy of the artists. Photo: Sammie Anselmo / West Elm