ARTIVISM Festival 2026
Campus & Community: UBC’s ARTIVISM Festival Returns for Its 10th Year
Looking for inspiring local arts programming that centers climate justice, community, and marginalized voices? ARTIVISM is celebrating its 10th anniversary from September 14 to October 16, and this year’s lineup offers plenty to explore across campus and around Vancouver.
Produced by Exposure UBC—a student group dedicated to building conscious community and uplifting underrepresented creative voices—the annual month-long festival brings together artists, ecologists, and local organizations.
What Does "More Than Human" Mean?
This year’s theme, More Than Human (curated by Creative Director Carmen Toledo Bores), asks us to step back and look at the world beyond a strictly human lens. The core question driving the festival is urgent and timely: What becomes possible when we stop placing our ways of knowing at the center?
Rooted in climate activism, multispecies thinking, and sensory art practice, More Than Human explores how knowledge and memory live within the ecosystems around us. Through live performance, film, and interactive workshops, the festival aims to challenge colonial narratives and spark conversations about community-based futures for all living things.
“This year, ARTIVISM turns to non-human ecologies as sources of knowledge, resilience, and imagination. How do we, as humans, de-center our ways of knowing to make space for other intelligences? How does that de-centering help us reflect on colonial and extractive narratives that have shaped our relationship to the living world? And how can centering ecologies open pathways toward post-colonial, community-based futures — for all species, not just our own? More than Human seeks to start a conversation rather than deliver an answer, through art, collaboration, and reciprocity.” – 2026 Director, Carmen Toledo Bores
Local Partners & Highlights
One of the best parts of ARTIVISM is how it connects campus arts with broader Vancouver arts and community groups. This year’s programming features cross-town collaborations with partners our readers know and love, including:
Vancouver Queer Film Festival & Vancouver Latin American Film Festival
Museum of Vancouver (That Which Sustains Us)
Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (Jana Sterbak: Dimensions of Intimacy)
UBC Centre for Climate Justice, featuring a key talk with Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor (End Times Fascism and The Fight for the Living World)
Supported by the UBC Public Humanities Hub and the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, ARTIVISM offers a great opportunity to support student-led organizing, engage with local climate activism, and check out some wonderful multidisciplinary art this fall.
Festival Details
Dates: September 14 – October 16, 2026
Where: Various venues across UBC and Vancouver
Full Schedule & Updates: Check out the UBC ARTIVISM Festival Page or follow along on Instagram @exposure_ubc and @artivismfest.