Arts Roundup
Sept. 24, 2026

Music

• Multidisciplinary artist Melody McArthur spoke to the Reluctantly podcast from Terry Evans about overcoming grief and self-doubt while building her creative career, including touring with the all-Indigenous musical Bear Grease. She's working on a seventh album and a memoir called The Gospel Truth, along with a new podcast about missing and murdered Indigenous people.
• CKUA will host Sister City Sessions on Oct. 8 during Canadian Finals Rodeo Week. The songwriters-in-the-round show will pair Nashville's Lillie Mae with Edmonton musicians Joe Nolan and Lucette. Edmonton and Nashville have been sister cities since 1990.
• St. Albert classic rock band Sparrow Blue will play the second annual Lazy Bison Music Fest in Wainwright on Oct. 3. The six-piece, known for high-energy shows and recent U.S. tours, told CKUA it is working on a new album due in 2027.
• Canadian prog-metal band Protest the Hero announced a 15-date fall tour in support of its new album Within, with a Nov. 29 stop in Edmonton at Pawn Shop Live.

Visual arts

• Stone sculptor Stewart Steinhauer of Saddle Lake Cree Nation told the Edmonton Arts Council about his two new sculptures, The Bear and Two Souls Touching, installed on the new Strathcona County Footbridge. Steinhauer, who has carved granite since 1973, said the granite pieces draw on an 8,000-year-old Cree story about the arrival of newcomers to Turtle Island.
• Edmonton painter Tim Rechner's abstract exhibition Street Lights Flickering is on display in The Carrot Kaleido Gallery until Oct. 3. Rechner, who has lived and worked in Edmonton since 2001, discussed the show's instinctual, blind-drawing technique with CKUA's Grant Stovel.
• St. Albert wildlife photographer Nick Parayko was among the winners of the 2026 Audubon Photography Awards. Parayko told CBC's Edmonton AM that his award-winning shot of a Tennessee warbler was taken in the backyard of his new house.
• The Town of Stony Plain and the Parkland Potters' Guild unveiled the Rooted in Clay mural to mark the guild's 50th anniversary.
• The City of Spruce Grove added seven locally made artworks and photographs to its Municipal Art Collection, bringing the collection to 277 pieces.
• Rat Creek Press columnist Constance Brissenden highlighted the design of the Kathleen Andrews Transit Garage, an award-winning building on Fort Road topped by five sculptures by Berlin artist Thorsten Goldberg that double as light wells.

Theatre and dance

• Reviews praised Theatre Network's season-opening musical Oh, Anne!, Bridget Ryan's all-women adaptation of Anne of Green Gables, after it opened at the Roxy Theatre. Postmedia's Liane Faulder called the show "smart, funny, and heart-breaking, too." Blogger Lucy Haines said it was terrific, noting that co-producer Jason Carter's paintings are also on display in the theatre during the run, which continues through Oct. 18.
• Punctuate! Theatre and Pyretic Productions are staging Kohkom's Babushka, a children's play by longtime friends Lianna Makuch and Joleen Ballendine that explores the historic ties between Ukrainian and Métis cultures. The show runs at La Cité Francophone before touring four Alberta Indigenous communities.
• CRIPSiE's Nothing About Us, Without Us, a show featuring spoken word, dance and music, aimed to challenge stigma around performers with disabilities. "I am out and proud about being disabled," choreographer Brooke Leifso told CBC Edmonton's Radio Active. "The theme … is really looking at how do we uplift disabled lives, our stories, our issues, and our art?"
• Tiny Bear Jaws and Common Ground Arts will present I Don't Even Miss You from Oct. 1 to 11. The show uses electropop, home videos, and iPhone footage to tell the story of a computer programmer who woke up to discover everyone they love was gone.
• Common Ground Arts announced the departure of managing producer Rainier Pearl-Styles later this fall as she moves to the West Coast to pursue an opportunity. Pearl-Styles, who joined in February, will stay through the fall to support its next show, I Don't Even Miss You, while the board plans a leadership transition.
• The made-in-Edmonton Colour Me Comedy Festival, created to boost visibility for comedians of colour, returns to Edmonton from Sept. 24 to 26. Ali Hassan, host of CBC Radio's Laugh Out Loud, is among the performers this year.
• Brian Webb Dance Company unveiled its 48th season, with six shows running from October to May that include world premieres by Amber Borotsik and James L'Hirondelle Viveiros, plus a new Canada-India collaboration with Anuj and Neha Mishra. Incoming artistic director Molly McDermott will work alongside founder Brian Webb through next season.

Books and publishing

• Cruising the Downtown: Celebrating Edmonton's Queer History, edited by Kristopher Wells and published by NeWest Press, won the awards for regional book of the year and book design of the year at the 2026 Alberta Book Publishing Awards, presented on Sept. 17. Wells, who now serves in the Canadian Senate, said the work grew out of years of community research through the Edmonton Queer History Project. "I'm always astonished at the stories that we discovered that I had no knowledge of," he told the St. Albert Gazette. "It's largely an invisible history. It's a history that's often been written out of official history." The book was designed by Natalie Olsen. Graveyard Shift at the Lemonade Stand by Tim Bowling won trade fiction book of the year.
• Candas Jane Dorsey's new novel At the Freak Show explores coming of age and gender identity. Dorsey told CBC's Edmonton AM the book is loosely based on a set of conjoined twins who were separated in Toronto.
• CTV News Edmonton spoke to Magpie Books co-owner Julie King-Yerex about getting noticed in The Economist's Plot Twist newsletter as one of the world's top bookshops, based on reader recommendations. "We have really great customers that we love and appreciate, and it's really nice to know that they love and appreciate us back," she said.
• The Fort Saskatchewan Public Library opened a new play structure called the Imagination Station with a $10,000 grant from Twice by Nice. The station for children six and under came from a request from the community for more non-digital play options.
• At Ends We Rest by Samantha Erron Gibbon and Wickhills by Premee Mohamed are at the top of the fiction books on the Edmonton bestseller list from the Book Publishers Association of Alberta.

Screen industries

• Three Edmonton filmmakers received funding for three-part docuseries from TELUS STORYHIVE: Damian Abrahams of Indigital Media for Red Beatz; Katia Youssef for Ex-Alta 3, a film about an experimental satellite from Alberta; and Tyson Mastel for The Girls, based on his children's book about architects Mary Imrie and Jean Wallbridge.
• Filmmaker Tyra Delver spoke to CKUA about pahkwêsikan sâkihitowin: Bannock Is Love, a new short about the role of bannock in sustaining Indigenous identity. The film debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 16 and is now available through the National Film Board.
• Actor and playwright Elena Eli Belyea announced their first short film as a writer and actor, Never Better, which premieres Sept. 27 as part of the Edmonton International Film Festival. The comedy follows a queer content creator who accidentally live-streams a breakup while chasing online fame.

More headlines

• Sunny Kakar and Raj Malhotra of the Sifarish are working with the City of Edmonton to bring a centralized Diwali festival with a fireworks display to Mill Woods Park, after fires linked to Diwali fireworks last year led to a spike in hate, the pair told CityNews. Permits are still pending; Edmonton Fire Rescue said in mid-September it hoped to finalize details within about two weeks. Diwali will begin on Nov. 8.
• Historian Ron Byers of Rainbow Story Hub is hoping to get the former site of the Boots 'n Saddle queer bar at 10242 106 Street NW designated as a historic resource now that the Heritage Places Strategy is in place with a more inclusive view of what constitutes history worth preserving. "The more we can make history accessible, the better, especially for young (LGBTQ2S+) people growing up," he told Postmedia.

Happenings

Here are some events coming up soon:

• Sept. 24-Oct. 3: Edmonton International Film Festival at various downtown locations
• Sept. 25: Queens for a Day starting at 6:30pm at Landmark Cinemas 9 (Edmonton City Centre)
• Sept. 25-27: AsiaFest at Currents of Windermere
• Sept. 25-27: Play the Fool Festival at Fringe Theatre Arts Barns
• Sept. 26: Special Craft Sale starting at 10am at Strathearn United Church
• Sept. 26: Harcourt House Party Fundraiser starting at 4pm at CO*LAB
• Sept. 26: Tipi Confessions starting at 7pm at Varscona Theatre
• Sept. 26-27: Alberta Culture Days at various locations
• Sept. 26-27: Remake: A Two-Day Upcycling Intensive at Augusta Fashion and Textiles
• Sept. 27: Book Launch with Alice Major starting at 2pm at Audreys Books
• Sept. 29: Slow Burn Poetry Open Mic starting at 7pm at New Amsterdam Cafe YEG
• Sept. 30: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
• Sept. 30-Oct. 11: Rubaboo Arts Festival at various locations

And here are more to keep in mind:

• Oct. 3-4: Harvest Art + Book Fair at ArtsHub Ortona
• Oct. 4: Script Salon: Pieces by Jezec Sanders at Holy Trinity Anglican Church
• Oct. 14-18: LitFest at various locations

Visit the Taproot Edmonton Calendar for many more events in the Edmonton region.