About Artcity

Artcity Festival is Calgary's annual celebration of visual art, architecture, and design. For 10 days each year, new artworks, installations, and projects are temporarily inserted into the urban landscape for discovery and engagement by ordinary citizens and interested parties.

Artcity produces an extensive amount of interpretive content as well, with lectures, podcasts, and educational tours dispersed throughout the exhibition schedule. 

All Artcity events are open to the public with free admission. 

The 17th annual Artcity Festival will take place September 4th to the 13th of 2020, under the thematic banner of "Festival Express".

 

Mandate

Artcity is produced by the Visual Arts Week Society (VAWS), a non-profit, volunteer-run society dedicated to enhancing the public's experience and enjoyment of contemporary visual arts, architecture and design.

Artcity brings art and architecture into the spaces where the public lives and works. The organization recognizes the continually changing needs of artists and the nature of artistic presentation, and as such provides flexible exhibition opportunities to individuals and groups working in all (inter-) disciplines. The Festival opens possibilities in Calgary for conversations, debates and realizations about how and what artists, architects and designers do and how they see and shape the world around us. Artcity programs new, critically engaged work by professional artists in dynamic settings, and supports activities of a similar nature in the broader Calgary community through partnerships and joint programming ventures. The society provides a high-profile infrastructure to independent practices that move existing genres and ideas forward.