Arts & Culture Centres

Arts & Culture Centres
The Arts and Culture Centres are owned and operated by the Department of Tourism, Culture and Recreation, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The first Centre, in St. John’s had its first perfromance on May 22, 1967 – since then, five other Centres have been created, in Gander, Grand Falls-Windsor, Corner Brook, Stephenville and Labrador West.
Unique in Canada, this chain of theatres provides both rental facilities for local and national performances, and also presents a limited number of provincial tours, for both Newfoundland and Labrador artists, and from the rest of Canada.
The Arts and Culture Centres also exist as a resourse for a number of Community Presenters throughout the province, who present some of the attractions presented in the Centres, to communities not served by an Arts and Culture Centre.
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CB Nuit
CB Nuit
CB Nuit is a multi-disciplinary, after dark arts festival that invites contemporary exploration and expression. CB Nuit aims to engage artists in the creation and installation of site specific and participatory contemporary works. By bringing art, from all mediums, to the streets, businesses, and vacant spaces, CB Nuit has the goal to invigorate, beautify, inspire and economically stimulate our community. The festival provides an opportunity for engagement between Corner Brook’s numerous creative individuals and groups, including Grenfell’s Fine Arts Department (professors, student body and alumni), and our visual arts, theatre, dance, digital arts, voice and music communities. This opportunity for creative expression is also extended to our community at large, inviting local groups, schools and individuals to collaborate in projects and even produce their own project. CB Nuit has the long-term goal to become an international destination for artists participating in the festival as well attracting an international audience.
Clarenville Events Centre
Clarenville Events Centre
The Clarenville Event Centre is a multi-use building designed to meet the region’s requirements for sports and recreation, active living, community meetings, gatherings and events.
In addition to offering an ice surface for general skating, figure skating and hockey, the event centre includes an indoor walking track. The theatre will offer an appropriate setting for arts events, lectures or seminars. This multi-use facility will also enhance the region’s ability to host conferences and conventions.
The event centre is a positive investment in healthy living and regional growth and development, adding substantially to the sustainability of the region and enhancing the quality of life for people in the area.
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Corner Brook Arts & Culture
Corner Brook Arts & Culture
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Eastport Peninsula Heritage Society
Eastport Peninsula Heritage Society
The Eastport Peninsula Heritage Society Inc. is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to celebrating and showcasing the culture and heritage of the Eastport Peninsula region through history, music, drama and visual arts. We are governed by a volunteer 15-person Board of Directors under a constitutional framework.
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First Light Centre for Performance and Creativity

First Light Centre for Performance and Creativity
The First Light Centre for Performance and Creativity is an Indigenous-led not-for-profit, professional arts centre, operating under the broader umbrella of First Light: St. John’s Friendship Centre. The centre provides a space for the development, exhibition and appreciation of traditional and contemporary art by providing facilities, professional expertise and a supportive atmosphere for arts creation, presentation, and dissemination. The Centre for Performance and Creativity supports all disciplines with a primary focus on music and performance. First Light believes that arts and a strong commitment to cultural preservation and revitalization, as a means of reconciliation, are integral to stronger communities. The centre aims to advance all arts, with a focus on Indigenous-led arts.
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Gander Arts & Culture Centre
Gander Arts & Culture Centre
Garrick Theatre

Garrick Theatre
The Garrick Theatre in Bonavista opened to the public on Christmas Day, 1945. Built by 21 year-old John Bradley with the assistance of his father, F. Gordon Bradley, the Garrick has been a popular entertainment venue and social centre for generations of area residents.
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Gorden Pinsent Centre for the Arts
Gorden Pinsent Centre for the Arts
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Gros Morne Summer Music

Gros Morne Summer Music
Gros Morne Summer Music (GMSM) is a year-round interarts organization now operating under a shared leadership model of Artistic Director David Maggs and Executive Associate Mhiran Faraday, both enjoying national and international experience with complex, innovative ventures. In 2018, the organization restructured, focusing an operating model on areas of training, presentation, and creation, and developing a national strategy to advance the organization’s role in arts policy, research, and innovation. GMSM owns two arts facilities (in Corner Brook and Woody Point, Newfoundland) with capacity for fully-equipped artist residencies, practice and performance spaces, recording facilities, and a digital laboratory. Mission: Rooted in Western Newfoundland, our work aims to deepen the social agency of art with a commitment to the integrity of artistic practice. We use the interconnected platforms of training, creative development, and presentation to integrate the transformative capacity of art into daily life. Vision: is to aspire to bring complex social themes into compelling aesthetic encounters working across and beyond arts practices as a global collaborator.
Jack Byrne Regional Sport & Entertainment Centre
Jack Byrne Regional Sport & Entertainment Centre
Tasked with providing sport and entertainment activity for the Northeast Avalon region of Newfoundland.
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Kittiwake Dance Theatre

Kittiwake Dance Theatre
Kittiwake Dance Theatre, Newfoundland’s oldest non – profit dance company, founded in 1987, makes its home in St. John’s, one of North America’s oldest cities. It has a company repertoire of over fifty works incorporating a variety of styles and subjects from the dramatic to the humorous and the traditional to the contemporary, with numerous works reflecting Newfoundland’s rich history and cultural heritage. In addition to providing the public with quality performances reflecting the width and breath of the world of dance, Kittiwake’s mandate includes an obligation to nurture the art of dance by providing local students with workshops and residency projects, with not only Kittiwake’s artistic staff, but with touring companies as well. In past years, Kittiwake has joined forces with the Arts and Culture Centre in securing residency projects with dance companies such as Motus O Dance Theatre, the Danny Grossman Dance Company and Toronto Dance Theatre, to name just a few. These events are open to all local dancers and students with the appropriate level of technical training.
Labrador West Arts & Culture Centre
Labrador West Arts & Culture Centre
Lawrence O’Brien Arts Centre

Lawrence O’Brien Arts Centre
The Lawrence O’Brien Arts Centre is a not for profit corporation with a volunteer board of directors who represent all facets of arts and culture in eastern Labrador. This umbrella organization works with a large community volunteer sector to foster the arts and cultural heritage, integrating schools and community groups.
The Lawrence O’Brien Arts Centre aims to provide accessible, supportive, well resourced programs and venues for the performing arts, with a focus on the creation, development and advancement of art by local artists and youth in Labrador.
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Neighbourhood Dance Works

Neighbourhood Dance Works
Neighbourhood Dance Works (NDW) assumes an essential leadership role in the advancement of the professional milieu in our country’s most easterly province. We are the front-runner for board-based artistic programming in dance in this province, which informs our connections to artistic allies within Atlantic Canada and peers across the country. We represent the professional sector, alongside the dance service organization (DanceNL), by liaising with regional and national artists, stakeholders and presenters who contribute to NDW’s growth and resilience.
Co-Founded in 1981 by Cathy Ferri and Agnes Walsh as a performance collective, Neighbourhood Dance Works began by creating innovative dance works for stage. It later shifted its focus to presentation, introducing the first Festival of New Dance in 1990, curated by Ann Anderson. Under her direction, and subsequently that of Lois Brown, Anne Troake, Sarah Joy Stoker and now a community-based committee, the festival continues to grow each year.
Neighbourhood Dance Works’ ongoing support and development of Newfoundland choreographers and dancers has advanced the careers of many Newfoundland dance artists and has made the Festival of New Dance a major cultural highlight of the St. John’s performance season.
For more information, about NDW programs please visit: www.neighbourhooddanceworks.
Photo Credit (Louise Moyes)
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Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival

Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival
The Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Arts Society (NLFAS) is a charitable organization located in St. John’s, NL whose mandate is the promotion and preservation of the traditional folk arts of the province. Active since 1966, the organization presents educational and cultural events that provide artists with the opportunity to showcase their work and that engage our youth and the general public in the transmission of our intangible cultural heritage.
Our two longest running events, Folk Night at the Ship Pub and the Annual Newfoundland and Labrador Folk Festival are rites of passage for up and coming folk and traditional musicians, and beloved by seasoned performers. Our support for young artists is amplified at our annual Young Folk at the Hall concert, and on the Neil Murray stage for young performers at the Festival. Our events give audiences the opportunity to engage in celebration of our traditional folk arts. Our annual Holiday Wassail is a gathering where families can sing their favourite Christmas Carols along with some of our best musicians in a warm and welcoming atmosphere. Our Folk Festival not only showcases great performers, but gives our audiences a chance to take part by playing along in open jam sessions, learn traditional dances, arts and crafts.
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Resource Centre for the Arts
Resource Centre for the Arts
Resource Centre for the Arts is a thirty year old artist-run organization dedicated to the development, promotion and presentation of indigenous Newfoundland art and artists. It makes its home in the historic L.S.P.U. (Longshoremen’s Protective Union) Hall in the heart of the province’s capital city, St. John’s.
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Rotary Arts Centre
Rotary Arts Centre
The Rotary Arts Centre Committee’s mission is to see a community Arts Centre for the city that will serve our arts and cultural producers and the public (our local community and tourists alike). Our planning envisions this facility taking the form of a centre that will house space for artists’ studios, public exhibitions, workshops, small theatre performance and rehearsal space to serve visual artists and craft persons, musicians, actors and dancers — all sectors of arts and culture that can avail of the centre — and serve the public who seeks to enjoy all of the above.
Stephenville Arts & Culture Centre

Stephenville Arts & Culture Centre
Stephenville Arts & Culture Centre houses a main theatre which seats 435 and a black box theatre which seats 150. We also have an Art Gallery and other rooms which work great for conferences.
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Stephenville Theatre Festival

Stephenville Theatre Festival
The Stephenville Theatre Festival has become a cornerstone among professional theatre companies in Newfoundland and Labrador providing employment for artists, technicians, designers, along with training and hands-on experience for numerous individuals, many of whom are now counted among Canada’s top professional artists. Stephenville Theatre Festival has enriched the economic and cultural fabric of the Town of Stephenville and has become a major draw for tourism.
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The Tuckamore Festival
The Tuckamore Festival
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Writers at Woody Point

Writers at Woody Point
Writers at Woody Point literary festival in Woody Point, Bonne Bay, Newfoundland had its inaugural season in 2004. The festival is organized and presented by Friends of Writers at Woody Point and, each year, has played to sold-out audiences. This August, as in the past, the event will be hosted by CBC Radio’s Shelagh Rogers, host of “The Next Chapter” a show about Canadian writing and writers.
The lovely and historic western Newfoundland village of Woody Point, on the south shore of Bonne Bay, is surrounded by the breathtaking landscape of Gros Morne National Park. Writers, artists and scientists are drawn here from around the world. Home-grown talent runs deep, too – in art, craft, music and award-winning architectural restoration. In the heart of the community stands the Woody Point Heritage Theatre, built in 1908. Owners Charlie and Joan Payne have carefully restored and renewed this cherished village feature, which has been the lively home of community dances, suppers, meetings, plays and concerts over the years.
Now this unique part of the cultural heritage of Newfoundland and Labrador also provides the stage and setting for the annual Writers at Woody Point events. Firmly rooted in Newfoundland literature, which is itself wildly acclaimed across Canada and internationally, the festival attracts both writers from abroad and those nurtured here at home. They come to Woody Point to read their work to hospitable audiences of villagers and visitors – sell-out crowds, in fact. Here the authors can also connect with other writers over dinner and drinks or on a hike into the pristine hills. And they can soak up the area’s own creative talent at exhibits of art and crafts, musical performances and impromptu after-hours celebrations that combine jam sessions, dancing and lots of laughter.