Itineraries

Your Festival, your way.

Explore the 2026 Festival through six curated itineraries designed to help you discover programs that match your interests. Follow First Nations Voices through culture, creativity and community, discover the people and ideas shaping Canberra as a City of Design, explore sustainable futures with Adapt our World, get creative with Make + Connect, find playful experiences with Kids + Families, or discover Canberra on foot with Walk + Explore

Choose your itinerary, book your events and start exploring.

First Nations Voices

Experience First Nations Voices. Discover powerful stories, culture and creativity through exhibitions, public art and conversations led by artists and knowledge holders. Explore First Nations design, creative practice and the strength of community connection across the Festival.

2026 Program

Are we measuring Canberra all wrong?

6 November 2026 | National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

In line with the Craft + Design Canberra Festival theme of Dissent, this conversation asks whether we are measuring the things that matter most. As Canberra grows and changes, are we optimising for the metrics that are easier to count, or for the things that make our city a better place to live? This discussion will explore how the measures we choose influence the places we create, and whether it is time to broaden the way we define success.

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BOLD Dissent

12 – 13 November 2026 | Canberra Museum and Gallery

BOLD Dissent is a two-day conference featuring leading dancers, designers and thinkers from across Australia and the world bringing a focus on dissent. Shaking up the way we create and present performing arts and the ways in which organisations and artists can create more accessible and inclusive environments for the future.

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Dissent by Design | Creativity as a Tool for Change

6 November 2026 | National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

Dissent by Design explores creativity as a form of dissent: the ways artists, designers, activists and storytellers use their practice to resist, imagine and rebuild.

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Elder Art

6 – 22 November 2026 | Queanbeyan Hive

A powerful act of dissent against the marginalisation of older voices, Elder Art is an exhibition of artworks by older members of the community. Through art and artist talks, the exhibition amplifies these voices, celebrating the richness that a long life and diverse experiences of history can bring to our shared community.

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POWER – The Future is Here

7 November 2026 – 30 January 2027 | Canberra Contemporary

POWER - The Future is Here is the result of a collaboration between Kamilaroi/Gamilaraay and Biripi artist Dennis Golding and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students from Alexandria Park Community School, who designed capes informed by their lived experiences and cultural identity.

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Signs of Dissent  | Graphic Interventions 

5 November – 6 December 2026 | Various Locations

Featuring works by Yamile Tafur Rios, Brock Willis and Danish Quapoor, Signs of Dissent | Graphic Interventions transforms public space through site responsive artworks responding to the Festival theme of Dissent. Drawing on cultural identity, environmental narratives and quiet acts of resistance, each artist challenges everyday perspectives and reimagines the visual landscape of Canberra.

Read more →

Walk On Country

15 November 2026 | Black Mountain

Walk on Country with Tyronne Bell (Ngunawal ) through the tracks and trails of Black Mountain, gaining a First Nations understanding of bush foods, artefacts and stone tools, with panoramic views of Canberra along the way. This tour reads the landscape through Ngunawal knowledge held and carried forward since long before Canberra was planned, offering the 2026 Festival theme of Dissent as continuity of culture on Country.

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Weaving Waters | Mangi the Murray Cod

5 July – 13 December 2026 | Tuggeranong Arts Centre

In dissent against the decline of the Murray Cod, Tuggeranong Arts Centre invites you to join collaborative community weaving sessions, using natural fibre and recycled materials to complete a large scale textile sculpture. Hear First Nations stories and learn about the environmental conservation efforts surrounding this threatened and culturally significant species.

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Canberra As a City of Design

See Canberra through design. Explore a city shaped by growth and change, and meet the architects, makers, dancers and thinkers imagining what comes next. See how design can question the familiar, rethink our city and shape new possibilities.

2026 Program

ALTER – a double bill of Design, Dance, Disability and Dissent

6 + 7 November 2026 | Belconnen Arts Centre

Design and dance collide in a double-bill exploring the interplay between body, identity and cross-cultural exchange. ALTER is an Austral/Asian collaboration presented by dancers living with and without disability - offering a beautiful hybrid of ephemeral visual art and dance, illustrating the power of dissent through lived and imagined realities.

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Are we measuring Canberra all wrong?

6 November 2026 | National Film and Sound Archive of Australia

In line with the Craft + Design Canberra Festival theme of Dissent, this conversation asks whether we are measuring the things that matter most. As Canberra grows and changes, are we optimising for the metrics that are easier to count, or for the things that make our city a better place to live? This discussion will explore how the measures we choose influence the places we create, and whether it is time to broaden the way we define success.

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Canberra Open Homes

9 – 15 November 2026 | Across Canberra

Explore Canberra's award-winning Architecture with new landmark buildings and ingenious sustainable residences through the Australian Institute of Architecture's ACT Chapter tour program.

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Delightly

5 – 25 November 2026 | Canberra Glassworks

Delightly revives endangered scientific glassblowing skills, transforming salvaged laboratory glass into plasma-illuminated vessels. Harriet Schwarzrock creates objects whose luminous behaviour shifts with viewer proximity, taking science out of the museum. Darkened, subtly interactive installations offer multi-sensory wonder, merging curiosity with playful public engagement in glass and light.

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Designing Currency

6 November 2026 | Royal Australian Mint

2026 marks the 60^th anniversary of Decimal Currency, designed by Australian industrial designer Stuart Devlin and minted here in Canberra at the Royal Australian Mint. To mark the year, the Mint presents an in-conversation event with coin designers Neve Foxcroft and Lydia Ashe.

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Dissent: Opposition/Proposition

10 November 2026 | Reconciliation Place

Presented by Architectus in partnership with SONA and EmAGN, Dissent: Opposition/Proposition brings together emerging thought leaders from architecture, urban design and adjacent fields to interrogate the role of sanctioned and unsanctioned design in the city and explore how opposition can become a proposition for change.

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Raw and Refined

5 – 22 November 2026 | Canberra Airport

Raw and Refined is an exhibition of new work by established contemporary jeweller Phoebe Porter exploring the dualities of raw and worked, natural and cultural, and material and meaning. The project explores refinement both as an artistic act, distilling ideas and forms to their essence, and as a material process in which raw elements are transformed to become workable.

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Adapt our World

Imagine new possibilities. Explore how design, craft and creative practice can respond to environmental and social challenges through exhibitions, talks and experiences. Discover new approaches to more sustainable, resilient and imaginative futures.

2026 Program

Bespoke Utopia

23 October – 15 November 2026 | M16 Artspace

Bespoke Utopia presents Canberra artists whose practices embrace the principles of slow design that is grounded in care, material knowledge and long-term thinking. Linking global conversations around sustainable design with Canberra’s rich craft history, the exhibition invites audiences to consider how design shapes everyday life and how thoughtful creative practices can challenge fast, disposable production models.

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Clothing the Loop: Sustainable Fashion and Circular Design Festival

6 + 7 November 2026 | Canberra Institute of Technology, Woden

Fashion meets activism. Performance meets purpose. Dissent becomes a work of art. Across one vibrant weekend, Clothing the Loop unfolds as a spectacular evening event and a full day of activities. Live dance, a runway parade, panel talks, clothes swaps, installations, tours and practical workshops celebrate the intersection of sustainable design, live performance and creative activism.

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EMERGENCY | Signal, REPAIR, ADAPT

5 November – 12 December 2026 | Craft + Design Canberra

EMERGENCY: Signal, Repair, Adapt brings together artists and designers working across ceramics, glass, textiles and media to examine what it means to make objects in a time of disruption. A major exhibition that affirms the power of creative practice to imagine alternatives where established systems have failed.

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EMERGENCY | Signal, Adapt, Repair Talk

7 November 2026 | Craft + Design Canberra

Join curator Stacy Jewell and exhibiting artists from EMERGENCY | Signal, Repair, Adapt for a shared conversation exploring resilience, transformation and repair.

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NEST | Design for a Displaced Future

5 November – 6 December 2026 | Civic Square

NEST | Design for the Displaced Future is a major public art commission for the 2026 Craft + Design Canberra Festival, responding to the theme of Dissent. Located in Civic Square, the temporary public art installation brings together sculptural works exploring the universal instinct to nest and belong in a changing world.

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Northbourne Precinct Heritage Tour | A Walking Tour

10 + 12 November 2026 | Northbourne Avenue

Join The Fix It Chicks, architect Jenny Edwards and broadcaster Lish Fejer, alongside architect Marcus Graham from Stewart Architecture and Gabe Szivek from Art Group for an evening walking tour exploring the retrofit of Canberra’s mid-century public housing on Northbourne Avenue, including access inside one of the retrofitted maisonettes.

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Revitrification

5 – 15 November 2026 | Australian National Botanic Gardens

Revitrification transforms discarded architectural waste glass into sculptural installations at the Botanic Gardens, in the process researching circular methodologies that give new value to landfill-bound materials. The project embodies dissent, rejecting the convention that discarded glass has reached the end of its useful life in our designed city.

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Make + Connect

Make with your hands. Join workshops, artist led activities and creative experiences that invite you to learn, connect and breathe. Discover new skills and experience the creativity and wellbeing that comes from making.

2026 Program

2026 Craft + Design Canberra Open Studios + Organisations Open Day Program

7 + 8 November 2026 | Various Locations

Step inside the studios of Canberra’s makers and discover the creative practices of local craftspeople, designers, artists and arts organisations. Proudly supported by home.by.holly.

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2026 Craft + Design Canberra Undercurrent Design Market

13 - 15 November 2026 | Ainslie Arts Centre

The Undercurrent Design Market brings together over 50 accomplished makers from across Australia, showcasing contemporary work in jewellery, glass, ceramics, textiles and diverse creative mediums.

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Dissent through Decal | Ceramic Decoration Workshop

10 November 2026 | Craft + Design Canberra

Explore Art Deco design with artist Sarit Cohen. Decorate a ceramic bisque-fired cup using geometric decals and clear glaze, experimenting with colour, pattern and composition to reflect your personal perspective on place.

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Hacking Histories: Sonified Textiles

11 November 2026 | Craft + Design Canberra

Create an embroidered soft circuit inspired by a memory of early digital technology. Combine stitching, copper tape and sound interaction to explore how personal stories can spark small, creative acts of dissent.

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Reflective Clay

14 November 2026 | Ainslie Arts Centre

Slow down with clay. Use a mindful approach to make an unfired 'thought bubble' vessel. Watch it decay in nature over time when you are ready.

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Slow Stitched Talismans | Acts of Gentle Dissent

12 November 2026 | Craft + Design Canberra

In quiet dissent against a world that values speed over stillness, this workshop invites you to explore hand stitching techniques to slowly shape and adorn a talisman made from natural fibres and filled with flowers. Slow stitched talismans honour care, imperfection and the power of handmade objects as vessels of memory and protection.

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Textile Transformations | Radical Rugs

9 November 2026 | Craft + Design Canberra

Transform an old t-shirt into a new patch or artwork with a message of protest, resistance or rebellion using traditional rug making techniques.

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Very Cross Stitch

11 November 2026 | Canberra Contemporary

Join feminist artist and craftivist Dr Tal Fitzpatrick for a ‘Very Cross Stitching’ workshop as part of her solo exhibition Quietly Seething: Fate, Fury and Transmutation at Canberra Contemporary. Participants will be invited to stitch directly into Tal’s exhibition artwork, while sharing and connecting over what makes them cross.

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Kids + Families

Create together. Discover playful activities, performances and experiences for curious minds of all ages. Try something new, spark your imagination and experience the Festival together.

2026 Program

2026 Craft + Design Canberra Undercurrent Design Market

13 - 15 November 2026 | Ainslie Arts Centre

The Undercurrent Design Market brings together over 50 accomplished makers from across Australia, showcasing contemporary work in jewellery, glass, ceramics, textiles and diverse creative mediums.

Read more →

Canberra Kinetic Sculpture race

7 November 2026 | National Carillon

Canberra Kinetic Sculpture Race is a one-day spectacle of human-powered, amphibious art machines. Teams create imaginative sculptures that travel across land, sand, and water in a whimsical celebration of creativity and dissent. Audiences can explore, watch, and cheer on these inventive, handmade moving artworks.

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Digital Dissent | Microgames Showcase

7 – 8 + 14 – 15 November 2026 | National Film and Sound Archive

Digital Dissent is an interactive showcase of innovative microgames exploring dissent, presented by Canberra Game Developers Association (CanDev) and hosted by the National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA). Play the games, then join Digital Dissent in Discussion to hear local designers reflect on how Canberra’s game design community embraces dissent.

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Pattern Play

14 November 2026 | Ainslie Arts Centre

Discover the infinite possibilities of simple printmaking in this playful workshop. Using recycled materials and reclaimed textiles, you will create your own patterned cloth to take home, a small and wearable act of dissent.

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Radical Joy

6 – 18 November 2026 | Q Gallery

Want to ‘give the finger’ to actions (or inaction) that cause you distress? Sick of responding to issues and concerns with anger or sadness? Radical Joy can help you find humour and hope to communicate your concerns.

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Wing It! A Children’s Atelier for Hatchlings of Change

12 November 2026 | The Learning Nest Co.

Wing It! Is a bold, hands-on children’s atelier where young ‘hatchlings’ explore a range of unexpected materials such as UV paint, odd car parts and splatter tools in a creative mess. This boundary-breaking workshop invites children to experiment freely and challenge expectations through invention, imaginative problem-solving and creative risk taking.

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Walk + Explore

Walk the city. Explore Canberra’s streets, parks and waterways through guided tours, night walks and public art. Discover creative interventions, unexpected perspectives and new ways of experiencing the city.

2026 Program

Braddon Mural Magic | A Walk Through Creative Corners

8 November 2026 | Braddon

Discover Braddon’s bold murals on an immersive guided walk exploring how artists use public walls to challenge ideas and spark conversation. Find hidden corners, encounter striking works up close and uncover the stories shaping Canberra’s most eclectic suburb. Braddon Mural Magic invites all ages to see the city as a living, creative gallery.

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Moonlight Meanders Night Walks

7 + 14 November 2026 | Lakeside + City

In a spirited act of dissent against the boundaries of public space, Localjinni presents two projected night walks through Canberra’s Civic Centre. Led by local artists these saunters reclaim the right to roam and creatively reimagine the city after dark.

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NEST | Design for a Displaced Future

5 November – 6 December 2026 | Civic Square

NEST | Design for the Displaced Future is a major public art commission for the 2026 Craft + Design Canberra Festival, responding to the theme of Dissent. Located in Civic Square, the temporary public art installation brings together sculptural works exploring the universal instinct to nest and belong in a changing world.

Read more →

Nightwalks with Teenagers

12, 13 + 14 November 2026 | City

Nightwalks with Teenagers is created with local youth, who plan, design and lead public walks through Canberra at night, exploring the neighbourhood with members of the community. It is focused on the power of walking together, bringing together teens and adults to have a unique social experience in shared spaces.

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Revitrification

5 – 15 November 2026 | Australian National Botanic Gardens

Revitrification transforms discarded architectural waste glass into sculptural installations at the Botanic Gardens, in the process researching circular methodologies that give new value to landfill-bound materials. The project embodies dissent, rejecting the convention that discarded glass has reached the end of its useful life in our designed city.

Read more →

Signs of Dissent  | Graphic Interventions 

5 November – 6 December 2026 | Various Locations

Featuring works by Yamile Tafur Rios, Brock Willis and Danish Quapoor, Signs of Dissent | Graphic Interventions transforms public space through site responsive artworks responding to the Festival theme of Dissent. Drawing on cultural identity, environmental narratives and quiet acts of resistance, each artist challenges everyday perspectives and reimagines the visual landscape of Canberra.

Read more →

Stories in the Dark

5 – 15 November 2026 | Civic Square

Stories in the Dark is an animated public light installation in Civic Square by Eggpicnic. Shifting between daylight and nighttime hours we see and hear species and ecosystems that have been ignored or erased, challenging us to confront ecological neglects. Transforming our attention into responsibility and making dissent a deliberate act of ecological care.

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Walk On Country

15 November 2026 | Black Mountain

Walk on Country with Tyronne Bell (Ngunawal ) through the tracks and trails of Black Mountain, gaining a First Nations understanding of bush foods, artefacts and stone tools, with panoramic views of Canberra along the way. This tour reads the landscape through Ngunawal knowledge held and carried forward since long before Canberra was planned, offering the 2026 Festival theme of Dissent as continuity of culture on Country.

Read more →

See Full Festival Program