A driven team of Hamilton artists and community builders founded Supercrawl in 2009 out of a desire to expand on the promise of James Street North’s monthly Art Crawl. Showcasing great music alongside an entire street of cultural experiences — a diverse and dynamic lineup of music, art, fashion, performance, talks, crafts, food and fun (local, regional national and international) — the festival has captured the imagination of culture lovers far beyond the city.
Audiences have enthusiastically embraced Supercrawl’s creative ambitions. Over the festival’s first six years, the event has gone from a one-day celebration on a single city block to a weekend-long experience spanning more than a dozen blocks, with attendance growing steadily from 3,000 to 165,000 in that time. Supercrawl 2014 resulted in an economic impact of over $14 million. More importantly, festival audiences left with renewed conviction of the power of the arts and convinced of the city’s cultural vitality.
In 2015, Supercrawl expanded both the festival’s physical footprint (covering 16 city blocks) and its programming/production ambitions, and will build upon that foundation still further in 2016.