On a Saturday afternoon in October, the doors of a two-storey building on Kam Lake Road will swing open to anyone curious enough to walk in. There will be needles and wool for felting, looms threaded for rigid heddle weaving, clay on the wheel, dye vats, knitting needles, and splints for basket making. Artists from the Yellowknife Guild of Arts and Crafts will be on hand to demonstrate, and visitors will be invited to try the work themselves. The event, Show and Tell with the Guild, runs from noon to 4 p.m. on October 17, 2026, at the Aurora Arts Studio at 113B Kam Lake Road, and admission is free.
It is the second of two demonstration days the Guild is holding this year, and it lands in the middle of a much larger party. The Guild is marking its 80th anniversary in 2026, and it has stretched the celebration across a full year of events, exhibits, and activities designed to carry arts and crafts out of the studio and into the wider city.
The Guild was formed in 1946, which makes it one of the oldest continuously operating craft guilds in Canada. Its founding president was Ruth Stanton, a northern nurse who, according to the Guild's own history, set the example for everyone who followed. In those early years, Yellowknife was less a city than a cluster of mining camps on the shore of Great Slave Lake, and the Guild gave people — particularly women — a reason to gather, share skills, and socialize through the long, dark winters. Members joined because they were new in town, wanted to share their art, or simply needed an excuse to escape the house. More than three-quarters of a century later, the Guild notes, the motivations of its members are much the same.
That continuity is unusual. Over the decades the Guild has moved from place to place as Yellowknife grew and changed: Con Mine, Negus, the old St. Patrick's school, Sir John Franklin High School, the Legion and Elks halls, the basement of the old library, rooms in the old City Hall, and the basement of the old Northern Health Building. A partnership with the Catholic school board gave the Guild space in a school art room for a decade. It was not until 2007 that the Guild occupied its current building, owned by YK Dairies — the first time in its history it paid rent. The building at 113 Kam Lake Road, with its pottery studio on the ground floor and mixed media studio and library above, is the Guild's first independent home.
Today the Guild supports more than 18 different disciplines under one roof, from pottery and fibre arts to stained glass and silversmithing. Its pottery classes have become some of the most sought-after in the city; fall workshops have been known to sell out in minutes. The organization runs on a mix of paying students, volunteers, and unpaid instructors working within a mentorship structure, and it hosts public events through the year — an ice cream bowl sale, craft supply swaps, ornament-decorating workshops, and seasonal spring and Christmas sales where members sell pottery, weaving, knitting, and felting.
The 80th-anniversary year began in March with a month-long mixed media exhibition at the Snowking Winter Festival on Yellowknife Bay, featuring fibre arts, weaving, basketry, carving, and woodworking by Guild artists, followed by a demonstration weekend on March 21 and 22. In August, Guild members set up at Ramble and Ride and invited the public to glaze tiles that will be gathered into a final exhibition. The Fireweed Studio, the Guild's summer shop, opened during the Yellowknife Farmers Market season beginning in June. The year is set to close with a three-month exhibition of members' work at the Yellowknife Visitor Centre, running from December 2026 into February 2027, which will also display tiles and other items made during the anniversary activities.
The first of the two demonstration days, held on September 12, gave visitors the chance to watch raku firing and various fibre and mixed media techniques, and to take part in hands-on activities including tapestry weaving. The October 17 event follows the same spirit, with a lineup that leans toward the tactile: needle felting, rigid heddle weaving, knitting, pottery, fabric dyeing, and basket making.
Rosanna Strong, who sits on the Guild's event planning committee, said the anniversary year was deliberately built around reaching beyond the Guild's own walls. "We do a lot of our work at the guild site at 113 Kam Lake Road, but this year we really wanted to take arts and crafts into the community," she told Yellowknifer in January. The point, she said, is to celebrate both the artists who teach at the Guild and the role art plays in bringing people together. "It's really about community," she said. "Anybody can take part in arts and crafts, and it's a way for people to connect and share creativity."
Guild chair Georgina Williston attributed the organization's longevity to the same impulse. The Guild has endured, she said, "because it has always provided such a unique place for the community of Yellowknife to gather, learn and be in an atmosphere that fosters creativity."
For anyone who has never thrown a pot, threaded a loom, or felted a piece of wool, the October demonstration day is designed as an open door rather than a class. It is a chance to watch skilled hands at work and then try the same motions, in a building that took the Guild 61 years to call its own. The event runs noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday, October 17, at the Aurora Arts Studio, 113B Kam Lake Road, Yellowknife. Admission is free.