Rooted in Community. Driven by Discovery. Committed to Arts and Culture.
Supercrawl is Hamilton’s premier multi-arts festival, fusing new and independent music with art installations, fashion, performance, literature, theatre, and artisanal craft. Supercrawl’s diverse multi-disciplinary program of sound, performance, visual and media arts is staged along a pedestrian-only creative corridor in the heart of downtown.
A not-for-profit arts organization, Supercrawl is committed to honouring, showcasing and celebrating all varieties of creative work, positioning local and emerging artists alongside significant provincial, national and international peers. The festival fosters and promotes arts and culture as well as the myriad benefits they provide.
A team of Hamilton artists and community builders founded Supercrawl in 2009 out of a desire to showcase the city’s cultural vibrancy and eclectic arts landscape.
Since its exception, Supercrawl has successfully evolved from a modest arts-based single-day occurrence to a multi-day event with national/international profile and attendance. The festival has gone from a one-day celebration on a single block to a weekend-long experience encompassing over two kilometres of downtown streets, with attendance growing steadily from 3,000 in 2009 to more than 275,000 in 2023. In addition to its namesake free festival weekend, Supercrawl also produces ticketed concerts and events throughout the year.
Supercrawl 2023 resulted in an economic impact of approximately $32 million (calculated using the Ontario Ministry of Tourism, Culture & Sport’s Tourism Regional Economic Impact Model). More importantly, festival audiences left with renewed conviction of the power of the arts and convinced of Hamilton’s cultural vitality.
Supercrawl was shortlisted for a 2019 Ontario Tourism Award of Excellence for Tourism Event of the Year and 2017 Canadian Tourism Award for Event of the Year. The festival received the 2015 Ontario Tourism Award of Excellence for Tourism Event of the Year, and has been recognized as one of Ontario’s Top 100 Festivals/Events in eight sequential awards (2015-2020, 2023-2024). In 2019, Supercrawl’s Family Zone programming earned a Festivals & Events Ontario Achievement Award for Best Youth Initiative. In 2024, the festival was awarded an FEO Achievement Award for Best Volunteer Program.
Supercrawl is a Keychange associate festival, dedicated to achieving gender balance among onstage talent; learn more here.
Supercrawl is a signatory of the Breaking Down Racial Barriers Declaration, committing to end anti-Black racism in the Canadian music industry.
Supercrawl is also a signatory of the Government of Canada’s 50 – 30 Challenge, pledging its commitment to gender parity (50%), and significant representation (30%) of under-represented groups in leadership positions (such as boards, committees, and management) of members of other equity-deserving groups, including those who identify as Indigenous Peoples, Racialized, Black, and/or People of colour (“Visible Minorities”), People with disabilities (including invisible and episodic disabilities), 2SLGBTQIA+ and/or gender and sexually diverse individuals.
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