Vines Art Society exists to nurture artists who are working toward land, water, and relational justice and regeneration. Rooted in Indigenous knowledge, queer-hearted, and neurodiverse-minded, Vines welcomes all. We create opportunities for marginalized artists through professional development, an annual festival, year-round public programming, and advocacy initiatives that strengthen artists’ well-being. Our work is responsive, centering anti-oppressive community care and minimizing bureaucracy.
Art is created in respectful relationship with the land, honouring the protocols of the peoples of the land, sharing messages for our future. Through this relationship, art becomes a pathway for healing, belonging, and the development of our shared gifts.
Vines...
Vines Art Society was initiated by Artistic Director, Heather Lamoureux in 2015 and continues as an annual event on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Səl ̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xwməθkwəy̓ əm (Musqueam) Nations (Vancouver, BC). In 2025, the festival completed its 11th edition, presenting 96 performances and 53 installations, in eight urban parks over 10 days. Since 2015, we have carefully grown our programs in response to community needs, which now include Rooted Relations and Emerging Creatives (mentorships for grassroots Indigenous artists) and Heirloom Exchange (co-presentation support for emerging artists). We have recently begun touring and presenting additional showcases throughout BC with these programs. Additionally, in 2020 we began developing an Arts Service portion of our work, Ecosystems: Strengthening Artist Relations. This includes artist care, advocacy and repair, and wise practices.
Vines is guided by values of land, water and relational justice, and is responsive to the community in which we are embedded. Our offices are located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, which is widely understood to be Canada’s poorest urban postal code and is persistently challenged by the crises of homelessness and the toxic drug supply. A manifestation of generational and compounding impacts of colonial policies and extractive practices, the Indigenous population of the DTES is roughly 35%, compared to less than two-percent of Vancouver’s total population—and the numbers are consistently higher in the annual homelessness count. It is a neighbourhood called home by the most marginalized in our community, who are also the most vulnerable to the devastating impacts of climate change. For these reasons it is central to our mandate to support marginalized artists in developing their practices and present their work at our annual festival and year-round events.
A truly grassroots initiative, our budget has grown from $4,000 to $600,000 and received support from the Canada Council, BC Arts Council, City of Vancouver, Canadian Heritage, BC Gaming, Vancouver Foundation, Vancity Bank, and individual donors. The funding we receive allows us to hire more artists, host more events over a longer period of time in a variety of locations, and thereby reach larger, more diverse audiences. In 2022, Vines hosted a 10-day festival in eight parks, presenting over 60 performances involving over 100 individual artists with more than 4000 attendees.
Our annual Gratitude Report summarizes and highlights our past season's programming, events, festival and statistics; it is also our way of saying thank you to all of the artists and communities we are so grateful to work with year-round.
Click the image to download a PDF of our Gratitude Report.