SIMA Festival (2024 & 2025)

The SIMA Festival is an annual creative festival organized by the Outdoor Artist Collective, rooted in the majestic landscapes of Northern British Columbia and carried forward through the shared vision of Indigenous communities, artists, and environmental storytellers. Held in January 2023, 2024, and again in 2025, the festival has unfolded across Terrace, Hazelton, Kitselas, and Kitsumkalum, transforming winter into a season of connection, reflection, and creative renewal. Artterra has supported the festival as its online partner, bringing artistic voices to a global stage through curated digital exhibitions and worldwide access.

Winter in these lands is more than a season—it is ancestral memory, cultural ritual, and quiet resilience. SIMA invites local and visiting artists, storytellers, and community members to gather outside, transforming the stillness of snow and cold into a tapestry of art, voices, and ideas. Set against a backdrop of environmental transition, the festival calls us to listen to the land, to share stories of place, and to redefine winter as a time of gathering, activism, and communal healing.

Each edition of SIMA has become a space for environmental leadership grounded in creative collaboration. Artists, Elders, and neighbours come together to co-author experiences that intertwine place-based storytelling, mindful art, and ceremonial exchange. The result is not only a festival, but a living canvas of land, memory, and movement—reminding us that art and culture can be powerful agents of climate awareness and social unity.

With its roots in Indigenous wisdom and its branches reaching outward into shared creative inquiry, SIMA Festival is a reminder that winter, too, can inspire. As the snow opens paths, so does art open possibilities for connection, care, and transformation in place-based resilience.