Edmonds Creative District Raises the Bar
Edmonds Creative District Raises the Bar
Since earning Creative District status in 2018, Edmonds has become a hub for visual art, performance, and award-winning dining. With monthly Art Walks and festivals featuring 200 plus artists, creativity fills the streets. It’s a place where art is not just displayed, it’s part of everyday life.
by Whitney Popa
Creative to its core, Edmonds is bursting with the energy of the arts—culinary to liquid, performing to literary—from its state designated Creative District and spilling beyond to its International District. Risk-takers, dreamers, artists and creators of all kinds are giving shape to a life enriched by the arts.
Walk through the town on any given day, and you’ll see why. Artists paint en plein air along the waterfront. Divers surface at Brackett’s Landing. Musicians tune up for evening shows. Chefs plate dishes that belong in magazines (kind of like this one). Brewers pour pints they’ve been tweaking for months.
This is what a Creative District looks like when it’s living and breathing, where it’s actively built—and doggedly supported—by its community.
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Visual Arts
Cascadia Art Museum anchors the Edmonds arts scene. The museum celebrated its 10th anniversary this past summer and continues to highlight Northwest painters, printmakers, sculptors, and photographers from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s. Its rotating exhibitions connect past to present, showing how regional art shapes the world today.
But Cascadia is just the beginning. Cole Gallery, Graphite Art Center, Sunlight Gallery + Studio, Hoadley Gallery West, and Young Gallery give visitors and locals alike endless opportunities to meet makers, watch artists work, and take home one-of-a-kind pieces. Monthly Art Walk Edmonds events (third Thursdays, 5-8 p.m.) turn the entire downtown into an open studio experience.
Then there are annual events like SketcherFest, an internationally recognized plein air event that brings artists from across the country to paint parks, beaches, and historic buildings. The Edmonds Arts Festival brings 200+ artists to Frances Anderson every Father’s Day weekend. Public art installations dot the city—from “Luminous Forest,” which connects Main Street to the Edmonds Center for the Arts, to dozens of murals sponsored by Mural Project Edmonds.
Performance Arts
The Edmonds Center for the Arts hosts national touring headliners and world-class productions. Olympic Ballet Theatre stages “The Nutcracker” each December. The Driftwood Players (operating since 1958!) bring shows like Broadway’s “Cinderella” and “Clue The Musical” to Wade James Theatre right on the edge of downtown. Music drifts out from Musicology Co., Engels Pub, Vinbero, and the Salish Sea Brewing Boathouse. You can catch everything from jazz to indie rock pretty much any night of the week.
The Cascade Symphony Orchestra performs seasonal concerts, too. Community chorales rehearse year-round. Access matters—no need to commute to Seattle or pay for parking to experience truly world-class performances.
Literary Arts
Edmonds is blessed with its own, independent bookstore, Edmonds Bookshop. They host readings from local poets and writers, the Cascadia Writers-in-Conversation Series, poetry festivals, and kids book readings. And, since 1985, the city has held the Write on the Sound conference, bringing in aspiring and published writers for a days-long workshop.
Edible Arts
Edmonds restaurants put the city on the culinary map long before Creative District certification made it official. Shubert Ho opened Bar Dojo in 2012 when Edmonds dining meant driving to Seattle for a good meal. Bar Dojo’s Asian-Latino fusion led to Salt & Iron steakhouse in 2015, The Market seafood eatery in 2018, and Fire & The Feast Italian in 2020. Ho also partnered on SanKai, Ryuichi Nakano’s destination sushi counter that draws fans up from Seattle.
Don’t forget that the late Anthony Bourdain was a vocal fan of Noodle House at Five Corners.
Niles Peacock worked Edmonds bars before opening his namesake restaurant near the ferry dock. The award-winning bartender-turned-pizzaiolo won first place at the 2022 International Pizza Challenge with his “My Hot Date” pizza—mozzarella, gorgonzola, Medjool dates, and balsamic glaze on 4-day-fermented sourdough crust, made with 128-year-old sourdough starter from Sourdough Willy’s across the water in Kingston.
Other pioneers continue pushing boundaries. Buccatini & Co. serves handmade pasta and Italian classics (try their grinders). Ono Poke flies its ahi in from Hawaii. You can eat your way around the world without leaving Edmonds, especially if you eat along Highway 99: Our Place, Yeh Yeh’s, Rise and Shine, and Dumpling Generation barely scratch the surface.
Sippable Arts
Salish Sea Brewing Company pours award-winning beers in two downtown spaces that welcome families, dogs, and craft beer lovers. Dusted Valley Winery brings Eastern Washington wines to its downtown Edmonds tasting room.
Kelnero shakes, stirs, and pours cocktails with the precision of a laboratory and the soul of a neighborhood bar.
Scratch Distillery teaches gin-lovers how to create their own recipes. Daphnes is known as much for its popular bartenders as it is for its strong drinks. Bar Americano serves European-style aperitivos. Virtue Wine pours wine made right down the road in Richmond Beach from its tasting room at Main Street Commons
Coffee artistry is plentiful, too. Check out the seasonal drinks at Stillhouse and the housemade whip at Walnut Street Coffee.
Waterfront Arts
The waterfront is art in motion. The Edmonds Underwater Park at Brackett’s Landing draws divers from across the world to explore sunken structures and marine life. The fishing pier attracts anglers year-round. Puget Sound Express will take you whale watching in Edmonds and up to the San Juans. Oh, and Sauna N Soak sets up a perfectly PNW mobile sauna just steps from the beach.
Public art installations are abundant and ever-growing. If you’re out walking the waterfront, check out the cedar totem pole carved by Tulalip tribal artist Ty Juvinel, right in front of the Edmonds Waterfront Center.
The Throwback Factor
Some things can’t be put in a box, but make Edmonds unmistakably itself. WhirlyBall combines bumper cars and lacrosse in a way that makes perfect sense once you’re there. The Edmonds Theater shows $5 movies on Throwback Thursdays. The Edmonds Bakery, open for more than 100 years, making custom cakes and the best-ever cookies. These traditions are part of what makes a Creative District feel like home.
See Edmonds Art In Action
The state didn’t make Edmonds creative when it certified it in 2018. It confirmed the lived experience of Edmonds’ own community, which has spent decades creating space for artists, chefs, musicians, and makers to thrive. Seven years in, that commitment has only intensified. That’s what happens when a town decides creativity isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the Edmonds DNA.
