Works Festival Returns to Churchill Square This Month

Churchill Square transforms into a sprawling canvas for art when The Works Art & Design Festival returns June 20–July 1. The 12-day festival, running for its first time since 2025, showcases installations, performances, and workshops that deliberately blur the line between looking and doing.

This year's theme is "Are You Here," exploring artists' perceptions of location, environment, proximity, space, and place. The festival deliberately positions art as accessible to everyone, not a gatekept experience. "Arts has often been seen as an elitist field," says Brooke Lovegrove, the festival's marketing and communications assistant. "We are trying to build a personal connection and make it accessible through this festival. I would describe this event as an opportunity to see creation without restriction."

Highlights include Maria Shironoshita's "Home: The Spaces That Makes Us," exploring home as a physical and emotional space through miniature sculptures and surreal collages. Jared Epp's "Anonymous Edmontonians" features body casts placed throughout the space, inviting viewers to approach them and question their meaning.

Darren Kooyma will display paintings titled "Resonate Scale," representing measures of time. Beyond showing his existing work, Kooyma will paint live during the festival. Jonathan Monfries's "Canopy" offers visitors a peaceful sanctuary—a series of beautiful wooden installations designed for people to interact with, sit under, and rest beside.

"We want to break the misconception that art is only meant to be looked at, not touched," Lovegrove says. The festival was founded in 1986 with the intention of introducing people to art by creating moments of discovery—the kind that might change someone's day or, as it did for Lovegrove, change the course of a life.