ArtStarts Gallery

If you’ve never poked your head in this place or attended one of their workshops — I highly suggest you check them out. Especially to those toddler toting Unilocalers out there… this little ditty is worth a drive downtown.
At the surface, this simply a beautiful, little gallery. It’s well laid out and generally features a few mediums at each exhibition. Where things get positively delightful, is that all the art featured is done by school age children in the Lower Mainland. Whether it be through a school program or onsite workshop, throughout the year ArtStart helps aspiring young artists get the tools and guidance they need and then provide a platform for them to showcase their work to the public.
How nifty is that?!
To make a good thing even better, they also host weekend drop in classes/​workshops/​all around fun times (sometimes puppets!!) for families on the weekend and continue to come up with creative and inspiring new projects in the city.
This past Summer they ran a program called YoungStarters where a handpicked group of aspiring artists were given the means and guidance to produce a piece of art (specifically a mural) that goes far beyond the idea of «children’s art». This is just «art»… pure and simple. The project was ambitious and well crafted. Bonus — they opened the painting of said mural up to the public. Getting the community involved?
Seriously… could these guys BE any cooler?
I’m a huge, HUGE fan of what they do. And I think you should be as well.
It’s all in all, a wonderful space full of creative people doing good things. And that ladies and gents, is an easy 5 stars to give.

Carrying bags of Homesense goodies, I should have just kept walking. Really, the only reason I was trekking down Richards was to check in on Lucy Mae Brown’s (whose lights had been on a few days ago). But I stopped in my tracks, intrigued by the idea of childrens art and a few minutes to spare.
How wonderful! A space that displays kids art — everything from painting, craft, poetry, short stories… even comic strip/​story boards. It boasts an environment where children can work with professional artists to create their own beautiful work. And you can feel the energy surging from the walls!
Artstarts might be an art gallery, but it’s unpretentious nature, youthful vibe and sheer merriment of it’s singsong like palettes totally brightened up my day.