It has been a long winter! Are you counting the time when everything gets back to ‘normal’ or making the most of it? With many festivals and events on pause, it might seem like nothing is going on, but here are some ideas on what you can do this weekend to brighten up your days. Go on a stroll, enjoy some outdoor art installations, check out one of your local attractions and stream a virtual concert. Whatever you choose to do, just get creative with it!
Outdoor Activities
Where: Various locations in Downtown
What: Tourism Vancouver has launched a new free outdoor public activation for Vancouver residents to enjoy in a safe and distanced way throughout the month of March. In partnership with the Downtown BIA, Robson BIA and the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre Hotel, this new unique passive outdoor experience, #LoveVancouver Bubbles, will include light and dance performances projected and at a distance at various sites around the downtown core.
Runs Thursday–Saturday 5 pm-9 pm until the end of March 2021
BRIGHT Downtown “Light up your Night”
Where: the šxʷƛ̓ənəq Xwtl’e7énk Square (North Plaza of the Vancouver Art Gallery)
What: Enjoy the final evening of ‘Bright Downtown’, a public outdoor digital artwork and animation projected onto the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver in the heart of downtown Vancouver. Taking place during a traditionally dark and wet time of the year, the intent of the project is to bring joyful and bright imagery to downtown that will “Light Up Your Night” – helping to create a positive and up-lifting feeling for the year ahead. This year’s theme is “Tangled,” exploring the relationship between art and community, visually defining how art is intrinsically interwoven into every step of the human experience.
Runs until March 12, 2021
Culture Compass Treasure Hunts
Where: North Shore
What: Where do you find Heritage? Interesting stories are all around you! Pick up clues while discovering natural & cultural heritage along North Vancouver’s Green Necklace or go online and explore the entire North Shore. Complete one or both hunts and enter to win the Grand Prize – the ultimate North Shore Staycation. Follow the clues to find letters and uncover the code word!
Runs until March 15, 2021
Guardians of the Garden: Bee Strong Challenge
Where: VanDusen Botanical Garden
What: Help us build a kinder environment for our hardworking pollinators by becoming a VanDusen Guardian of the Garden. Join us this spring for the Bee Strong Challenge to learn more about our pollinator friends, and how we can do our part to protect them. Complete the Bee Strong Challenge and collect your Bee Strong badge and reward for your hard work! Suitable for children ages 4 to 10 (but all ages are welcome), participants will earn their first Guardians of the Garden badge. Capes and pollinator costumes are encouraged.
Runs until April 5, 2021
Riley Park Winter Farmers Market
Where: 50 E 30th Avenue & Ontario Street
What: 70+ farms and producers, food and coffee trucks.
Runs on Saturdays until April 24, 2021
Hastings Park Farmers Market
Where: Hastings Park Centregrounds
What: 35+ farms and producers. food and coffee trucks.
Runs on Sundays until April 25, 2021
Museums & Galleries
Rainy days, mood swings, need to boost your creativity? Check out these new exhibits at Vancouver museums and galleries (pre-purchasing tickets is recommended).
Paddles Up! The Canadian International Dragon Boat Festival Exhibit
Where: The BC Sports Hall of Fame and Museum
What: Paddles Up! The Canadian International Dragon Boat Festival Exhibit explores the festival’s history since the sport’s arrival at Expo 86. Discover unique artifacts, including two full-sized dragon boats, hear stories from athletes of all backgrounds, and learn about the festival’s cultural heritage.
Runs on Fridays and Saturdays until May 31, 2021
Where: Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art
What: This solo exhibition by Luke Parnell is a powerful exploration of the relationship between Northwest Coast Indigenous oral histories, conceptual art, and traditional formline design. Indigenous History in Colour’s playful juxtapositions and bold commentary are inspired by history, pop culture, and Bill Reid. Parnell’s multidisciplinary analysis of the shifting perspectives of Northwest Coast art in modern history challenges contemporary discourse on notions of reconciliation, repatriation and representation today.
Runs until May 9, 2021
Where: Polygon Gallery
What: Feast for the Eyes explores the rich history of food as one of photography’s most prevalent and enduring subjects. In an age where sharing images of food has emerged as a unique facet of contemporary culture, this exhibition offers a look at the timeless ways in which things we eat shape us and our perceptions of the world.
Runs until May 30, 2021
Where: Richmond Art Gallery
What: Richmond Art Gallery presents “Inaction,” a new solo show by renowned Canadian contemporary artist Brendan Fernandes. The exhibition, co-produced with the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University, is RAG’s first collaboration with a U.S.-based institution. “Inaction” addresses violence against queer and POC bodies, as well as the potential for change through collective action.
Runs until April 3, 2021
Where: Vancouver Maritime Museum
What: Silent Witness features a collection of photographs by Italian photographer and artist Stefano Benazzo who has spent decades seeking shipwrecks from some of the most remote locations around the globe. His work narrates the scenes of these wrecks with light and portrays the soul of the abandoned vessels. The photographs in Silent Witness tell the story of decay for these ships, capturing their architecture and presenting them as sculptures embedded in the landscape.
Runs until July 18, 2021
A Future for Memory: Art and Life After the Great East Japan Earthquake
Where: Museum of Anthropology at UBC
What: The exhibition coincides with the 10th anniversary of the 2011 triple disaster that saw a 9.0 magnitude earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown hit the eastern region of Japan. A Future for Memory highlights nature’s destructive impact on humans and its regenerative potential, and explores how humans live in harmony with nature. It also examines how new connections and relationships have developed in the aftermath of this tragic event.
Runs until September 5, 2021
Where: Museum of Vancouver
What: The Museum of Vancouver and the University of British Columbia proudly present a new feature exhibition, A Seat at the Table, Chinese Immigration and British Columbia. This exhibition explores historical and contemporary stories of Chinese Canadians in BC and their struggles for belonging. It looks to food and restaurant culture as an entry point to feature stories that reveal the great diversity of immigrant experience and of the communities immigrants develop.
Runs until January 2022
Whose Chinatown? Examining Chinatown Gazes in Art, Archives, and Collections
Where: Griffin Art Projects
What: Whose Chinatown? Examining Chinatown Gazes in Art, Archives, and Collections,” brings together an art history of Chinatowns and their communities by historical and contemporary Canadian artists such Emily Carr, Unity Bainbridge, Yucho Chow, Fred Herzog, Paul Wong, Mary Sui Yee Wong, Morris Lum, and aiya哎呀, among others.
Runs on Saturdays until May 1, 2021
Virtual Events
While we are patiently waiting for the time when in-person events will happen again, here are some great virtual offerings that you can enjoy from the comfort of your own home.
Join in on the fun as Montréal’s acclaimed La Nef and Chor Leoni present Shanties! This high-energy collaboration showcases hearty sea shanties, haunting laments, and rollicking songs of the sea as you’ve never heard them before. Enjoy it as a concert experience, invite your friends, sing along, and rewatch it as many times as you like. Your viewing link will be sent in response to your RSVP. Shanties! is an entertaining voyage of discovery – welcome aboard!
Runs until March 14, 2021
Vancouver Opera – The Music Shop
In this brilliant comedy (that is great for the family!), a meek husband desperately searches a music shop for a song requested by his wife. But if only he could remember the title or the tune of the song! His Wagnerian wife appears in a series of hilarious hallucinations during his mad scramble through the ill-fated music shop. If you enjoy opera, music theatre, musicals like Into the Woods, and zany comedy you’ll love this opera. A Canadian premiere performed and directed by the Vancouver Opera Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program participants.
Runs until April 12, 2021
Chan Centre’s Spring 2021 Dot Com Series
The Chan Centre’s Spring 2021 Dot Com Series features eight all-new performances which will be delivered 100% online and recorded around the globe—from Mexico to Montreal to our very own Chan Centre stage. Additional Performances launched every two weeks, this week’s addition is BC’s very own spoken word artist Shane Kayczan.
Runs until May 31, 2021
CelticFest Vancouver returns this March with a their first-ever virtual festival. With a trad session on St Patrick’s Days and events throughout the week ranging from a virtual game show, cocktail class and the Family Day with story-telling, music, art, language and more – there’s something for everyone.
Runs until March 20, 2021
Dancers of Damelahamid presents a celebration of Indigenous arts as part of the newly envisioned Coastal Dance Festival virtual presentation. The free, online festival will feature the world premiere of a new short dance work in honour of the late Elder Margaret Harris by Dancers of Damelahamid, as well as performances and cultural sharing by many of the festival’s long standing artists.
Streaming until March 18, 2021
The Dance Centre: Kinesis Dance somatheatro
Debris is a contemporary dance work inspired by the increasing urgency of pollution and its contribution to the climate crisis. As we buckle under the weight of the accumulation of man-made waste, Debris asks where is the body (humanity) and nature within this? In this collaborative work, Artistic Director Paras Terezakis and 5 dancers physically explore the effects of ‘debris’ that submerge both their internal and external environment. The work seeks for a hopeful re-integration of a respectful relationship between nature, the body and each other.
Streaming on demand until March 16, 2021
