100+ visual and performing artists, exhibitions, sales, performances, and workshops.

Outsider Art refers to the work of any artist who has little or no contact with the mainstream art world, often including low-income, visionary, folk, and aboriginal artists, and artists with mental health diagnoses.

The inaugural Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival offers access to audiences, patrons, peers, community and learning to artists who do not currently have access to mainstream markets or cultural institutions.

It is rarely recognized how, throughout history, art created by those who identify as “outsiders” profoundly influences trends, aesthetics, and evolution of cultural thought within the mainstream. Outsider Art can be evocative, prophetic, subversive, and can draw our attention to cultural legacies and understandings that are often marginalized, yet that profoundly shape our society.

There are as many definitions of Outsider Arts as there are artists who identify as outsiders. The Vancouver Outsider Arts Festival aims to create a space for dialogue, exploration, and shared discovery of what Outsider Arts means here, in this place, at this time, and what its contribution is to how we understand ourselves as a society.