Not sure what you want to do this weekend? Vancouver has events for gallery-wanderers, sports fans, aspiring wine connoisseurs, music lovers, endorphin enthusiasts, and even for those who rearrange their living room a couple times a month (yes, we know you’re out there). Time to get off that couch and get out into the city!
Friday | Saturday | Sunday | Ongoing
Friday February 21
Where: Various locations
What: Full Circles Talking Stick Festival, now in its 19th year, began as a way to showcase and celebrate Indigenous art and performance to a wider audience. Now attracting over 18,000 attendees each year and still growing, they are noted as being the premier, multi-disciplinary Indigenous arts festival in North America. With a desire to appeal to Indigenous and non-Indigenous attendees alike, our programming focuses on the diversity of visual arts, dance, theatre, music, pow wow and film in both traditional and contemporary format.
Runs Until: Saturday February 29, 2020
Where: BC Place
What: Avoid the guesswork. Meet the experts. Get expert advice for your next home project at the BC Home + Garden Show. Don’t miss HGTV Canada celebrity contractor Bryan Baeumler, presented by RBC for practical advice and inspiration. From kitchens and baths to flooring and landscaping, find great deals, new ideas, and inspiration for all your home and garden projects.
Runs Until: Sunday February 23, 2020
Where: Culture Lab
What: A true story—depending on who you ask. A one-woman comedy about the relationship between two sisters and what happens when one of them changes. The real life experience of sister/actor Naomi’s 70-pound weight loss, written through the perspective of younger sibling/writer Deborah. BIG Sister explores a world of evil siblings, fat shaming, and unlikely collaboration.
Runs Until: Saturday February 29, 2020
Where: Presentation House Theatre
What: God’s Lake chronicles the strength and resilience of the people in the remote fly-in reserve of God’s Lake Narrows, Manitoba following traumatic events of unresolved justice and a complex and challenging past. This glimpse into the lived reality of the community is told using verbatim text from interviews, heightened physicality, bold northern imagery, and an original live score. God’s Lake offers a rare chance to witness the difficult issues facing people living in a remote community within the reserve system.
Runs Until: Sunday February 23, 2020
Where: Annex & Anvil Centre
What: A musical adventure! Let’s go on three playdates; at a friend’s house, at the park, and at a concert! This show is filled with musical play, all set to the music of the Johannes Brahms! Featuring a woodwind quartet. Tiny Tots is a 4-concert series for the little ones, from toddlers to four or five years of age. Featuring professional music educators and musicians Let Your Music Shine! with Lisa & Linda, the concerts are 45 minutes long and full of sing-along, move-along fun.
Runs Until: Saturday February 22, 2020
Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival
Where: Various Locations
What: VIMFF is an annual international 9-day community festival, featuring mountain film screenings, live multimedia presentations, photography exhibitions, workshops, seminars & other special events. We are also a travelling show with awarded films, visiting 50+ communities across Canada, the US, Europe and Asia each year, and offering additional 5-day Speaker Series program every Fall in North Vancouver & Vancouver.
Runs Until: Sunday March 1, 2020
Where: Vancouver Playhouse
What: The inaugural Drumeo Festival will feature live masterclasses, performances, and full-band shows with some of the best drummers in the world.
Runs Until: Saturday February 22, 2020
Where: Commodore Ballroom
What: Platinum Blonde is back, but don’t call it a reunion. In reality it’s more like the band has simply taken a finger off of the pause button with the release of its new album, Now & Never. With four albums that have collectively gone Platinum seven times over and garnered multiple Juno Award nominations, along with an induction into the Music and Broadcast Industry Hall of Fame, it’s easy to wonder what else Platinum Blonde needed to accomplish? As it turns out, quite a lot.
Winter Jazz on Granville Island
Where: Performance Works
What: Coastal Jazz and title sponsor Granville Island are proud to present Winter Jazz on Granville Island—three days of free concerts to warm you, body & soul at Performance Works. All shows are free to attend, but an RSVP will secure your admittance. As well, everyone who RSVPs and attends will be entered to win a pair of tickets to Hiromi!
Runs Until: Sunday February 23, 2020
Ian Tan Gallery presents Exhibition 1010
Where: Ian Tan Gallery
What: Running concurrently with our established solo exhibition programme, this new series of exhibitions opens the gallery to guest artists from across BC; it expands our support and promotion of Canadian based contemporary artists. EXHIBITION 1010 features 10 paintings for 10 days with an opening reception on the third Thursday of each month beginning with Vancouver artist David Tycho’s Urbania
Runs Until: Saturday February 29, 2020
Saturday February 22
Black Strathcona Heritage Tour & Fountain Chapel Celebration
Where: 207 Union St.
What: The 6th annual Black Strathcona Heritage Walking Tour celebrates 161 Years of African Heritage in Vancouver (since 1859!). The tour will explore various historic sites, buildings, streets and businesses once owned by people of African Descent and the consequences of urban renewal in 1958-72 to our community. The walk focuses on community pioneers of the time, and celebrates the power and effect individuals can have in their own neighborhoods and communities
Chor Leoni presents Sea Songs & Shanties
Where: Chan Centre For The Performing Arts
What: Come aboard for a voyage of discovery as Chor Leoni and Montreal’s renowned early music collective La Nef unite to sing a program of hearty sea shanties, haunting laments, and rollicking songs of the sea. Collected from the age of great sailing ships and shared as oral tradition, these old songs with roots from America, Ireland, and the Caribbean will come alive on the Chan stage with players from Early Music Vancouver, La Nef and the voices of Chor Leoni.
Vancouver International Wine Festival
Where: Vancouver Convention Centre, West
What: Widely considered to be the best wine event in North America, at 42 years of age Vancouver International Wine Festival is one of the biggest and oldest wine events in the world. It has been voted the “#1 Food, Wine & Hospitality Event in Canada” the last seven years in a row by New York’s BizBash. With more than 25 other restaurants and venues around the city will host winery dinners, lunches, seminars and wine minglers, there’s something to please every palate
Runs Until: Sunday March 1, 2020
Callas In Concert – The Hologram Tour
Where: Orpheum Theatre
What: Forty years ago, Maria Callas shrugged off the earthly bonds of temporal life, leaving a bereft world longing for her presence, her performances, her voice. Now she returns to the stage, in all her grandeur, confirming her immortality to stunned audiences. Introducing Callas in Concert, a triumphant event that brings the beloved La Divina to the stage via hologram, singing to the accompaniment of the full VSO.
24 Hours of Winter at Grouse Mountain
Where: Grouse Mountain
What: Grouse Mountain is once again opening our doors to 24 consecutive hours of winter fun at the Peak of Vancouver! Celebrate on the slopes from sundown to sunrise. Dance, ride or skate the night away under starry skies as DJs spin your favourite tracks. Glide down The Cut while taking in a spectacular Vancouver sunrise or enjoy one of the many round-the-clock activities.
Runs Until: Sunday February 23, 2019
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Vancouver Canucks v Boston Bruins
Where: Rogers Arena
What: Rogers Arena is one of North America’s most active venues, and throughout the year, it hosts some of the world’s top entertainers. But nothing gets this state-of-the-art building more electrified than when the Vancouver Canucks take to the ice during hockey season. So whether you’re a diehard hockey fan wanting to witness professional hockey at its highest level or you’re just looking for Vancouver’s biggest party this winter season, head to Rogers Arena and you’ll quickly discover why, as they say in Vancouver, “We Are All Canucks.”
Sunday February 23
Mozart, Britten, and Mendelssohn
Where: Pyatt Hall
What: A four-concert series created and curated by the members of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra to highlight the quality and diversity of our musicians’ interests. All concerts in Pyatt Hall, the perfect gem of an acoustic concert venue in the VSO School of Music. Join members of the VSO for some of the greatest chamber music ever written.
Where: Commodore Ballroom
What: Iconic hip hop duo Atmosphere is taking the stage at the Commodore! Atmosphere’s live performances are legendary, and with support from The Lioness, Rhymesayers labelmate Nikki Jean, and DJ Keezy, “The Wherever Tour” promises to be a can’t-miss event.
CAG Family Day | Mapping Movement
Where: Contemporary Art Gallery
What: CAG and ArtStarts invite you to a unique Family Day that translates movement across science, dance and the visual arts. At ArtStarts, explore movement through time and space in a workshop led by dancer Lily Cryan. At CAG, families can contribute to a collaborative drawing that takes inspiration from exhibiting artist Ingrid Koenig’s large-scale artworks.
CAG Sunday Afternoon Tour with Kimberly Phillips
Where: Contemporary Art Gallery
What: Join CAG Curator Kimberly Phillips for a walk-through and discussion of the current exhibitions: The Artist’s Studio is Her Bedroom and Ingrid Koenig’s Navigating the Uncertainty Principle.
Where: Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre
What: Climb the Wall is the BC Lung Association’s annual stair climb fundraiser in support of the 1 in 5 British Columbians struggling with lung conditions. People of all fitness levels, and all ages take part while some participants climb solo, others as part of a team. This family-friendly event is open to adults and children alike; and is free for kids under the age of 12. If stair climbing isn’t an option for you, come on out, enjoy brunch, cheer our Climbers on and enjoy some unique Sunday morning fun!
Where: Waterfront Theatre
What: In Mort’s Village everything has its place, every day is the same and everyone likes it that way. Until one morning, crash, boom, bang! Down comes Beep from the sky, upsetting life in the village. Who is this noisy robot, and how will she find her home? If you loved the film WALL-E you will adore BEEP.
Runs Until: Sunday February 23, 2020
Where: Stanley Alliance Industrial Stage
What: Noises Off, hailed as the funniest farce ever written, treats audiences to a hilarious peek at a second-tier acting troupe performing a show. With egos, insecurities, and tempers flaring backstage—and forgotten lines, missed cues, and misplaced sardines onstage—this cast threatens to strike the old adage “the show must go on.” Michael Frayn’s dizzying play-within-a-play classic is sure to leave you doubled over with laughter.
Runs Until: Sunday February 23, 2020
Vancouver Art gallery presents Transit and Returns
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Transits and Returns presents the work of 21 Indigenous artists whose practices are both rooted in the specificities of their cultures and routed via their travels. These forces of situatedness and mobility work in synergy and in tension with one another, shaping the multiple ways of understanding and being Indigenous today. Within the exhibition, these dual realities are explored through themes of movement, territory, kinship and representation, with many artworks inhabiting multiple categories.
Runs Until: Sunday February 23, 2020
Where: 1100 West Georgia Street
What: Vienna-based artist Erwin Wurm alters and re-envisions recognizable forms in order to challenge our psychological perceptions of what is well known, including our bodies and familiar architectural forms. This 19th installation in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Offsite series will incorporate three sculptural works from Wurm’s oeuvre that highlight his wry sense of humour and his ongoing interest in the body. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, local artist Mike Bourscheid will develop a series of performative interventions.
Runs Until: Sunday February 23, 2020
Being Punjabi: Unfolding the Surrey Story
Where: Museum of Surrey
What: The first major exhibition in Canada to shine a spotlight on Surrey’s Punjabis, showcasing their stories of struggle and success. The exhibition is intended to be a catalyst for discussion and sharing, while also documenting histories of this diverse community.
Runs until: Sunday February 23, 2020
Ongoing
Where: Various locations
What: JFL NorthWest returns February 2020! Vancouver’s Just for Laughs festival hits stages and streets across the city for 12-hilarious-days of star-powered stand-up, podcasts, improv, film and sketch performances, alongside breakout comics you didn’t even know you loved! Enjoy top comics, up-and-coming stand-up stars, world-class improv, and sketch comedy, and then venture outdoors to the Block Party for giveaways, games, music and more.
Runs Until: Tuesday February 25, 2020
Photo: Maxine Bulloch
Where: Robson Square Ice Rink
What: This winter, renew a classic Vancouver tradition and enjoy some old-fashioned fun. Robson Square’s outdoor skating rink is open, so celebrate winter in style with skating in the heart of downtown Vancouver. It’s a magical place to enjoy the winter season with your friends, family and loved ones.
Runs Until: Saturday February 29, 2020
Where: Vancouver Maritime Museum
What: A Black History Month exhibition that celebrates the spirit of the Blacks who travelled from Africa to America and then finally to Canada. The photos and narration in the exhibition explore the struggles, the courage and the challenges they faced.
Runs Until: Saturday February 29, 2020
Karen Flamenco School Festival
Where: The Improv Centre
What: Karen Flamenco School Festival Karen Flamenco brings the glamour and extravagance of a large flamenco dance production onto a small theatrical stage. The one-hour production welcomes audiences of all ages with live traditional flamenco music, dance, storylines, puppetry and magic. The Karen Flamenco Dance Company will perform traditional flamenco group dances, accompanied by live flamenco guitar and singer.
Runs Until: Saturday February 29, 2020
Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival
Where: Various Locations
What: When it launched in 2011, The Vancouver Hot Chocolate Festival was the first city-wide festival of its kind in the world. This January it returns for its 10th year, bigger and better than ever, with Vancouver’s best chocolatiers, pastry shops, bakeries, cafes, gelato and ice cream makers coming together to make the humble hot chocolate hotter than it has ever been before. In the damp and gloomy days of our Westcoast winter, you’ll find our motto to be true: “Hot Chocolate Makes You Happy!”
Runs Until: Saturday February 29, 2020
Where: Secret Location
What: Welcome to “The New Now”—a time when written language has been suppressed and forgotten and hand-drawn love letters have become a powerful act of defiance. Becoming a puppet chorus, the audience both witnesses and propels the story as it unfolds. An inspiring theatrical love letter for increasingly uncivilized times.
Runs Until: Sunday March 1, 2020
Where: The Polygon Gallery
What: Elizabeth Zvonar is a Vancouver artist who works extensively with collage techniques and sculpture. Zvonar draws material from a broad spectrum of sources to produce savvy, sardonic, and often comical juxtapositions that critique socio-cultural norms. Her works—vivid, colourful, and alluring—are examinations of subliminal power dynamics and ideologies in visual culture. Her exhibition, I Spy, features two new large-scale murals and recent photographic collages that allude to how we look at and make sense of photographs.
Runs Until: Sunday March 1, 2020
Where: Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre
What: Ambassadors, the first exhibition of its kind at the Squamish Lil’wat Cultural Centre, celebrates the staff family and faces of the Cultural Centre while highlighting their strong sense of connection to their land, their cultures, and each other. Visitors to the exhibit will learn about our Ambassadors’ deeply-rooted connections to our immersive Cultural Centre, and the passion they share in belonging to Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Lil’wat7ul.
Runs Until: Sunday March 1, 2019
Arts Club Theatre Company presents CIPHER
Where: Granville Island Stage
What: After 63 years, the Beacon Hill Body remains a Vancouver Island cold-case murder. Forensic toxicologist Grace Godard thinks her scientific expertise is leading her close to an answer, closer than anyone has come before. But when she meets Aqeel Saleemi, a young man with a personal stake in the mystery, their efforts to crack the case have consequences neither of them imagined. This theatrically innovative and exhilarating world premiere will keep you on the edge of your seat.
Runs Until: Saturday March 7, 2020
Boone Dog Productions: Steel Magnolias
Where: The Nest
What: A classic tale of camaraderie, the all-female production follows six Southern belles and their steadfast friendships through marriage, illness, childbirth, and loss. Based on a true story, and written by Robert Harling in memory of his sister, the play opens on Shelby’s wedding day in small-town Louisiana in the big-haired, pastel-hued era of the 1980s. The characters come together — seeking solitude and haven — as they uncover their shared steely sense of inner strength.
Runs Until: Sunday March 8, 2020
Firehall Arts Centre presents: Talking Sex On Sundays
Where: Firehall Arts Centre
What: On the first Sunday of every month Margot and her friends always host a theme party. What happens when Margot decides to kick it up a notch by having a Sex Toy Party? In this New Musical by Sara-Jeanne Hosie and Nico Rhodes, we witness as these women share fears, reveal dirty secrets, explore new possibilities, and find the power of female friendship.
Runs Until: Sunday March 8, 2020
Vancouver Art gallery presents Cindy Sherman
Where: Vancouver Art Gallery
What: This major exhibition explores the development of Cindy Sherman’s work from the beginning of her career in the mid-1970s to the present day. Widely regarded as one of the world’s leading contemporary artists, Sherman (b. 1954) manipulates her own appearance by deploying material inspired by a range of cultural sources, including film, advertising, and fashion.
Runs Until: Sunday March 8, 2020
Arts Club Theatre Company presents Kim’s Convenience
Where: Various Locations
What: Mr. Kim, a Korean shopkeeper, grapples with both a changing neighbourhood landscape and the chasm between him and his second-generation offspring. This journey of a fractured but loving family forgiving the past and confronting the future is a new Canadian classic. Ins Choi’s hilarious and touching debut play inspired the hit TV show of the same name.
Runs Until: Sunday March 15, 2020
The Lind Prize 2020 Exhibition
Where: The Polygon Gallery
What: Established in 2016, the Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize is awarded annually to an emerging BC-based artist working in mediums of film, photography, or video. Artists are nominated for the prize by staff and faculty from established arts institutions, organizations, and post-secondary programs from across the province.
Runs Until: Sunday March 15, 2020
Community Olympic 10-Year Celebrations
Where: Various Locations
What: The City of Vancouver and Vancouver Park Board are hosting a series of community celebrations throughout February and March to mark the 10-year anniversary of the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games. To celebrate, the City and Park Board are inviting sports fans, past volunteers, and future athletes to participate in events around the city. Mark your calendars for the 2010 Blue Jacket Volunteer Celebration, 2010 Winter Games Pin Exchange, “Wear Red” Family Day Skates, or join “Community Living Rooms” to take in highlights from 2010 and re-live that golden goal.
Runs Until: Saturday March 21, 2020
Where: Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden
What: An ancient Chinese phrase to describe the study of the nature of the world, Investigation of Things focuses on how two different cultures observe, study, and understand individual items and objects, and how they fit into the world around us. Investigation of Things seeks to generate discussions through the differing perspectives highlighted by the ten artists featured in the exhibition, showcasing distinct cultural methodologies, and how these impact our view of the world. The show hopes to open cultural dialogues between Canada and China, through the evocative language of contemporary visual art.
Runs Until: Saturday March 21, 2020
Where: Cypress Mountain
What: Pizza, S’mores, Fire Pits, Music and more! Bring the whole family up and hang out, every Friday night.
Runs Until: Friday March 27, 2020
MOA Presents Playing with Fire: Ceramics of the Extraordinary
Where: Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC
What: Showcasing a group of 11 highly celebrated BC-based artists, this premiere exhibition of ceramic works, expresses strong opinions on urgent social issues and offers subtle perspectives on the state of our contemporary world. In Playing with Fire, the artists defiantly challenge the notion that all things made of clay are required to be functional; in their works, clay is released from this constraint and elevated into extraordinary works of art. Visitors are invited to explore the many layers of understanding each of these provocative works embody, boldly demonstrating clay’s myriad discursive possibilities.
Runs Until: Sunday March 29, 2020
Where: Cypress Mountain
What: Grab your skis and snowboards and get ready for some extra runs! Hours of operation have been extended until 10pm.
Runs Until: Tuesday March 31, 2020
CAG Presents The Artist’s Studio is Her Bedroom
Where: Contemporary Art Gallery
What: The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to presentThe Artist’s Studio is Her Bedroom, a group exhibition challenging our society’s profound assumptions about where and by what means “serious” artwork gets produced. Taking place across CAG’s B.C. Binning and Alvin Balkind Galleries, the exhibition shares the perspectives of ten Canada-based artists whose practices are attentive to these assumptions, and to the very real temporal, spatial and monetary constraints that bind and shape their work. Their contributions to the show address a multitude of labours—whether physical, emotional, reproductive or otherwise—that are often inextricable from artistic production.
Runs Until: Sunday April 5, 2020
Xuuya Gaada White Raven by Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson
Bill Reid Gallery: Out of Concealment
Where: Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art
What: Out of Concealment is a solo exhibition featuring the work of Haida artist, performer, activist, and lawyer Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson. Female Supernatural Beings of Haida Gwaii are re-imagined through photomontages, film, and sound to convey origin stories and oral traditions from the Haida Nation. Passed on from generation to generation, these are important narratives that illustrate the Haida laws, values, customs, rituals and relationships with earthly and metaphysical realms.
Runs Until: Sunday April 5, 2020
Ingrid Koenig – Navigating the Uncertainty Principle
CAG Presents Ingrid Koenig | Navigating the Uncertainty Principle
Where: Contemporary Art Gallery
What: Navigating the Uncertainty Principle is a major solo exhibition by Vancouver-based artist and educator Ingrid Koenig, presenting large scale drawings across the gallery façade and off-site at Yaletown-Roundhouse station.
Runs Until: Sunday April 5, 2020
Where: Bill Reid Gallery
What: Seven emerging Indigenous artists will be creating works on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish people that are originally from outside this territory. In What We Bring With Us, the artists’ work speaks to their relationship to this land and kinship founded through displacement in works ranging from photography to performance.
Runs Until: Sunday April 12, 2020
Yellow Peril; The Celestial Elements
Where: SUM Gallery
What: SUM gallery is proud to announce our first exhibition of 2020! Love Intersections curates a visual art exhibit inspired by the Chinese Five Elemental forces, seized by the urgent tensions between Queer Chinese diasporic identities. Featuring artists Jen Sungshine, Kendell Yan, Kai Cheng Thom, Jay Cabalu, and David Ng.
Runs Until: Saturday April 18, 2020
Photo – Pardeep Singh, Vancouver Art Gallery
Where: The Vancouver Art Gallery
What: Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art, Rapture, Rhythm and the Tree of Life – Emily Carr and Her Female Contemporaries is on view from December 7, 2019 to June 28, 2020. Drawn primarily from the Gallery’s permanent collection, this exhibition presents an expanded view of the diverse creative practices of women in this region during the first four decades of the twentieth century. Presented in conjunction with Carr’s paintings of forest interiors are works by Indigenous creators such as Amy Cooper (Th’ewá:li), Mary Little (Nuu-chah-nulth), and Placida Wallace (Líl̓wat Nation).
Runs Until: Sunday June 28, 2020
What are you up to this weekend? Tell me and the rest of Vancouver in the comments.
