Sunshine Coast artists welcomed more than 38,000 visitors during the three-day Art Crawl this month. Almost 200 studios and galleries freely opened their doors to visitors from around the world, including points of origin as distant as Japan, Australia and Peru.
Last weekend, dozens of Art Crawl exhibitors gathered at the Sunshine Coast Arts Centre to share their experiences from Oct.18 to 21 — and to review statistics collected during the annual event.
Respondents to a visitor survey indicated that over a third were first-time participants, while some have taken part every year since the event’s inception 15 years ago. The bulk of visitors travelled from points on the Sunshine Coast. A significant number came from Vancouver Island, with others ferrying from the Gulf Islands and Bowen Island.
Artists recorded $466,000 in sales, with a further $22,000 committed to commissions. The financial windfall has not yet fully rebounded to pre-pandemic levels of 2019, when gross proceeds generated by the Art Crawl peaked at over half a million dollars.
“Still, it’s remarkable,” said Linda Williams, executive director of the Coast Cultural Alliance. “It bounced back after COVID because people had money to spend because they hadn’t been travelling. But now it’s real. Our economy — the cost of everything — is so high. But people are still willing to go out and purchase hand-created art to fill their new homes.”
Survey data indicated that nearly three-quarters of visitors made purchases while onsite at a gallery or studio.
Wendy Chartres, who founded the Coast Cultural Alliance in 1998 and has been a two-time exhibitor, marvelled at the personal and collective impact. “The Art Crawl pushed me into paint,” she said, “because I love painting but I’m a newbie even though I’m from a family of artists. I finally thought: I can do this. And during [this year’s] Crawl? It was like a rolling conversation with the nicest people on the planet. I felt supercharged by the end of the weekend.”
Williams emphasized that the Crawl’s economic boom overflows beyond artist profits. Local art supply providers like The Painted Lady Art Supplies and Framing of Gibsons experience sales surges as exhibitors ready new material in time for the mid-October influx.
The Coast Cultural Alliance, which coordinates the Crawl, mounts a large-scale marketing campaign to attract visitors. The group paid for 40,000 advertising impressions alone through Google, and mobilized other social media platforms in its outreach. The publicity led to online dividends — at least 65 per cent of participants visited artists’ websites to conduct pre-visit research.
Participant anecdotes reinforced the quantitative summary compiled by Williams. “We always appreciate the chance to have conversations with artists about their work,” wrote one patron. “All were super-friendly and it was great to learn about their artwork and their inspiration.”
The alliance announced that the 2025 Art Crawl has been scheduled for Oct. 17 to 19. Exhibitor fees will increase to $250 as part of the group’s three-year sustainability plan.
Numerous exhibitors observed that visitors who braved this year’s rainy conditions were eager to engage artists in substantial conversation.
“Validation is so much a part of the Art Crawl,” said painter Roger Handling of Roberts Creek. “Even if you never sell anything, the validation should make you feel like this is a tremendously worthwhile event.”
