Summerside Arts Festival

The Summerside Arts Festival is about celebrating, promoting, and growing the city’s artistic and cultural community. It is about bringing awareness to the arts and establishing accessibility for all to enrich their lives with artistic connection that requires little commitment other than curiosity. It is about providing a stage for artists, artisans, musicians and more to showcase their work and talent, and personally interact with an audience.  And most important of all it is simply about having fun, delighting the senses, and making interesting discoveries.

The festival had its beginnings in an outdoor multicultural concert in 2006. The following year the Arts in Motion Water Street demonstration and performance component was added. Then drawing on the heritage of the travelling Chautauqua movement that brought artistic entertainment to Summerside in the 1920s, the Chautauqua Entertainment Tent was introduced.  The Arts in Motion – Chautauqua Festival was renamed the Summerside Arts Festival in 2018.

The festival continues to grow and evolve each year as the vibrancy and confidence of the arts community continues to blossom.  Festival presenters, Wyatt Heritage Properties Inc. has drawn in the city’s entire cultural community to partner in presenting the festival, made possible through funding from the Government of Canada, the Government of Prince Edward Island and the City of Summerside.