October is for art-lovers in Metro Vancouver and Whistler! The fresh autumn air means that it’s prime time to get outside for culture crawls. Vancouver’s North Shore and Surrey have crawls coming up with exclusive access to galleries, studios and creative spaces where you’ll meet inspiring local artists, discover new art and maybe even take a few pieces home. This month, you can also be moved through dance, discover the cracks where the light gets in, and explore some older works that are screaming new truths.

 

Burnaby Halloween – Burnaby

Begins Oct 1, 2025

Halloween brings endless opportunities to be creative, and your inspo is in Burnaby all October! Explore spooky creations like glowing pumpkin tunnels at Pumpkins After Dark in Central Park, folklore-at-dusk at The Haunted Village (Oct 22–26) at Burnaby Village Museum, and family-friendly “Halloweeks” at The Amazing Brentwood (Oct 6–31). Craft yourself a costume and then show it off at  Metro-Con (Oct 4–5), a costume-clad Monster Dash 5K (Oct 26), and The Dagerpaatch pumpkin carve in support of PADS (Oct 24–25).

 

Mystic Market – Vancouver

Oct 2 – 3, 2025

Roedde House Museum’s annual Halloween market turns its 1893 Victorian rooms into a candlelit bazaar—spooky crafts and curios from local makers, a tarot reader in the parlour, and oddities galore. With a $5 cover at the door, shop (till you drop!) the likes of She Wolf Tea, Pretty Dead Taxidermy, and Underground Botanicals. Hours are Thursday, 5–10pm, and  Friday,  4–10pm—in amongst the dark tall trees of Vancouver’s West End.

 

 

Geoffrey Farmer: Phantom Scripts – Whistler

Oct 2, 2025 – Feb 2, 2026

From Vancouver-born, by way of Kaua’i, Hawai’i, artist Geoffrey Farmer, comes Phantom Scripts, a revisit to three works from the Audain Art Museum’s Permanent Collection — Vampire Archive, November 22, 1974 (2010 – 2025), The Politics of Appearing (2012 – 2025), and The Good Sweeper (2017 – 2025). The combined exhibition presents these sculptures and installations with new timely scripts, annotations and didactic texts from Farmer himself, reframing his works in light of ever-changing awareness and attention on colonial entanglements and queer disidentification. It’s a fascinating look at how time can transform not just the artist, but the art he creates as well.

 

 

Charles Atlas: Hail the New Puritan – Vancouver

Oct 3 – Jan 25, 2026

Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery brings a cult landmark to the Alvin Balkind Gallery: Charles Atlas’s 1985–86 “docufantasy” film which follows Scottish choreographer  Michael Clark through a day of rehearsals for his 1984 work New Puritan and into the nightlife in cutting style: part faux-cinéma vérité, part dance film, all post-punk London attitude. There’s cameos and music from The Fall and members of Wire, with Atlas bringing performance and portraiture together into one kinetic wave. Admission is free.

 

 

North Shore Art Crawl – Vancouver’s North Shore

Oct 4 – 5, 2025

This free, annual 3-day arts festival offers art enthusiasts an insider’s look into the vibrant arts scene on Vancouver’s North Shore. With opening receptions, art practice demonstrations and open studio tours, from over 300+ participating artists across North Vancouver and West Vancouver, there is plenty to see and do. Grab your friends and family and make a weekend of it on Vancouver’s North Shore.

 

 

White Rock & South Surrey Culture Crawl – Surrey

Oct 4 – 5, 2025

The White Rock & South Surrey Cultural Crawl celebrates arts, culture and heritage across the Semiahmoo Peninsula over two exciting days. Enjoy art and historical exhibits, music, tours, theatre, and enrich yourself in the people, stories, and spaces that shape this region’s creative identity.

 

 

Co.ERASGA – Eternal Gestures – Vancouver

Oct 9 – 10, 2025

Eternal Gestures celebrates Co.ERASGA’s 25th anniversary as a dance company with a fierce commitment to cross-cultural, experimental dance with a focus on identity, ancestry, and the environment.  This imaginative and thought provoking world premiere consists of three works from Indigenous Coast Salish-based choreographers Starr Muranko, Michelle Olson and Margaret Grenier—all brought to life in a spirit-lifting, enlightening tour-de-force by dancer and Artistic Director Alvin Erasga Tolentino.

 

 

Oddities & Curiosities Expo – Vancouver

Oct 11 – 12, 2025

Vancouver Convention Centre becomes a cabinet of wonders for two days. It’s a hand-picked marketplace of taxidermy, preserved specimens, dark art, vintage medical ephemera, and other beautifully bizarre crafts, creations and finds. Always wanted to dive into taxidermy or the like? Now’s your chance with hands-on classes in “biological preservation” from The Sleeping Sirens that run all weekend long. Test the limits of your sdquyirm-meter at this international travelling show of the macabre.

 

 

Beautifully Broken – Kintsugi by Naoko Fukumaru – Burnaby

Oct 11, 2025 – Feb 21, 2026

Chemist Antoine Lavoisier’s famous law of conservation of mass, which states that “nothing is created nor destroyed, everything is transformed” is the spark of genius behind the Karasawa Gallery’s new exhibition, Beautifully Broken from Vancouver-based artist Naoko Fukumaru. Fukumara takes Kintsugi, the ancient Japanese art of “golden joinery,” in which ceramics are “fixed” with lacquer and powdered gold, to explore themes of “brokenness” in our own lives, where the cracks we all contain tell our story…and can always be transformed into strength and beauty.

 

 

Vancouver Opera: Rigoletto – Vancouver

Oct 25 – Nov 2, 2025

Vancouver Opera opens its 2025–26 season with Verdi’s dark jewel at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre—a sharp, tense tale of a father, a daughter, and a vendetta, threaded with opera-world hits like  “La donna è mobile” and “Caro nome.” Director Glynis Leyshon helms a new co-production with Pacific Opera Victoria under Jacques Lacombe’s conducting, with Michael Chioldi as Rigoletto and Sarah Dufresne as Gilda. Sung in Italian with English titles.

 

 

Ongoing

 

Gathered Leaves: Discoveries from the Drawings Vault  – Whistler

Until Oct 13, 2025

Showcasing rarely seen pieces from the National Gallery of Canada’s renowned prints and drawings collection, this landmark exhibition spans the 15th to 20th centuries. Marvel at the evolving artistry between generations in an extraordinary glimpse into the storied institution’s vault.

 

 

Vibrant Visions: The Art of Black Girlhood in Canada – Surrey

Until Oct 17, 2025

Vibrant Visions features a collection of artists exploring and expressing the being and belonging of Black girls in the Great White North. Using mixed media and materials, each voice recalibrates the sight lines of culture to illuminate obscured life, vibrancy and history.

 

 

Art in the Hall: John Clinock – Short Stories – Vancouver’s North Shore

Until Oct 20

A series of painted panels in a West Vancouver Municipal Hall, the artist describes each storied piece as a visual haiku or a dream fragment. “Vignettes of my life… They are images that appear daily in my mind.” Whether you view them in sequence or in random order, the collection challenges you to create a narrative from the fragments and see if you can relate to what naturally assembles.

 

 

Lay Me Down in Praise – UrbanScreen – Surrey

Until Oct 25, 2025

Growing up in Crenshaw, Los Angeles, a neighbourhood rich in cultural history and Black identities, Justen LeRoy’s artistic practice merged with a unique perspective on social narratives, resistance, and collective memory. Drawing from Crenshaw’s vibrant energy and layered histories, Leroy brings this unique sense of place to an incredible projection piece outside of Surrey’s City Centre Library. The piece begins just after sunset and is an incredible juxtaposition of spaces that bridge cultures and identities.

 

 

Abbas Akhavan: One Hundred Years – Vancouver

Until Dec 7, 2025

Examining how time is represented in narrative spaces, One Hundred Years uses site-specific installations, video and sculpture to explore meaning in various forms of reality. From stage to set to gallery, Abbas Akhavan finds a natural duality in each piece, whether it be hospitality and hostility, or institutional and domestic.

 

 

Christos Dikeakos: The Collectors – Vancouver’s North Shore

Until Dec 14, 2025

Showcasing portraits of art collectors from around BC and the world, this photo series presents a community whose love for art goes beyond passion. Sitting alongside their art collections, you can get a glimpse into the psyche of people on a journey of inspiration that can span a lifetime.

 

 

Otani Workshop: Monsters in My Head – Vancouver

Until Jan 4, 2026

In his first North American solo, Japanese artist Otani Workshop turns the Alvin Balkind Gallery into a maze of earthen mounds, tree stumps, and stone, from which raw, endearing creatures—boys, bears, antlered spirits—are born simultaneously of the artist’s imagination and somehow, our memory. Much of the installation is built with materials foraged locally, and several works nod to the Pacific Northwest, shaped during Otani’s Deer Lake residency at Burnaby’s Shadbolt Centre.

 

Potlatch Gifts – Vancouver

Until Jan 25, 2026

Centred on the act of gift-giving within potlatch traditions, this exhibition explores how the concept of reciprocity has evolved over time. As the first solo curatorial show from the Bill Reid Gallery’s Assistant Curator, Amelia Rea (Haida), Potlatch Gifts features multiple artists and numerous thoughtfully crafted items which have been gifted to others. Shown within the context of historical photos, this is an excellent chance to learn about tradition, craftsmanship, and the art of creating a gesture.