Eastside Culture Crawl celebrates 30 years of opening doors to Vancouver art studios, November 19 to 22

Milestone year brings the Preview Exhibition to the Eastside Arts Society’s newly purchased building at 716 E. Hastings Street

SPONSORED POST BY Eastside Culture Crawl

Eastside Culture Crawl 2025. Photo by Kris Voveris

The Eastside Arts Society is celebrating the 30th annual Eastside Culture Crawl from November 19 to 22. This local festival of visual arts, design, and crafts invites visitors into the studios of more than 525 artists across Vancouver’s Eastside Arts District.

This year’s Crawl features more than 85 new artists and 12 new buildings, a measure of the enduring creativity and resourcefulness of a vibrant community. What began in 1996 as a small gathering of 45 artists has grown into one of the city’s largest fall cultural events, connecting more than 40,000 art lovers each year with artists, craftspeople, and designers.

Terminal City Glass Co-op in The Mergatroid Building at the 2025 Eastside Culture Crawl. Photo by Heather Konschuh

The festival’s milestone 30th anniversary arrives at a landmark moment for the Eastside Arts Society. This year, it secured a major step toward permanence with the purchase of its 5,980-square-foot headquarters building at 716 E. Hastings Street, through the approval of a Making Space for Arts and Culture grant from Vancouver City Council. Beyond serving as a cultural hub for productions and presentations, the building represents a vital path forward to protecting, preserving, and expanding the Eastside’s vibrant arts and culture ecology.

As part of the 30th anniversary celebrations, the building will serve as the central hub for the Culture Crawl’s 2026 Preview Exhibition, P.A.R.T.Y. – Pushing Art diRectly To You, bringing 75 juried artists together from November 5 to 28. The Preview Exhibition provides a sneak peek at the variety of art that will be on display throughout the Crawl, with a curatorial concept, statement, and title developed by Crawl artists Eri Ishii, Hugh Kearney, and Paul de Guzman.

Parker Street Studios at the 2025 Eastside Culture Crawl. Photo by Rose Williams

In the leadup to the Crawl, the Eastside Arts Society will also host a series of fundraisers that are critical to keeping the festival free. These include the Culture Crawl 30th Anniversary Silent Auction, which runs from October 22 to 29; and the 30 for 30 campaign—inviting the community to help raise $30,000 to support 30 more years of accessible, low-cost arts programming—from November 2 to December 31.

Full details of festival events, artists, talks, and locations can be found on the Eastside Culture Crawl website.

Post sponsored by Eastside Culture Crawl.

---

Related Articles