This past summer, the Friends of Kingston Inner Harbour were delighted to accept a Community Foundation Canada 150 grant through a partnership of the Community Foundation for Kingston & Area, the City of Kingston and the Canada150 Fund.

This grant supported a Celebration of the Arts in Kingston’s beautiful Douglas R. Fluhrer waterfront park.  For the week preceding the Celebration, local artists were busy painting on the retaining wall behind Rideaucrest.  The quality of the work is truly unique and outstanding.  In addition to celebrating the 25+ artists and community groups who contributed to the ON THE WALL art event, the Celebration was a participatory arts festival where visitors could dance in an interactive way with the wall, learn to write a poem, experience parkour,  learn broadsword, Tai Chi, Jiu-Jitsu, bag piping and drumming as well as stand-up paddleboard, kayaking, children’s crafts and games, balloon art, face-painting, actually doing some painting on the wall and learning about our endangered local reptile and amphibian species. Something for everyone.

One west end visitor later wrote to say he had hosted many international and national guests of all ages this summer and taken them to Kingston sites and events such as Fort Henry and the Blues Festival. Without exception their favourite was Douglas R. Fluhrer Park and the ON THE WALL art works.  The paintings remain on the wall.  All Kingstonians are invited to come and have a look.

Check out this great video by Dave McCallum which truly captures this great event: https://youtu.be/h6Xv5PShhRg