City Arts Centre — Attraction in Edmonton

Think of the Edmonton City Arts Centre as a cruise ship far out at sea, with lots of activities planned to keep you happy. The catalogue headers give a good idea of the breadth available: cooking and baking, crafts and handiwork, dance, mind and body, music, photography, pottery and sculpture, silversmithing, soaps and lotions, theatre, visual art, and writing.

The hunnybunny has done some silversmithing, pottery (pix added to this review), and painting, and we've done a cooking class together. There's a lot you can use to distract yourself from a particularly heavy snowstorm :-)

The classes have been well planned and leave you with a nice artifact to commemorate your new (or growing) skill. The teachers personalities vary, so not all students will click with all teachers, but the centre seems pretty responsive in allowing switching...

I registered my husband and I for a cooking class at the City Arts Centre. Unfortunately, my husband woke up the day of with a stomach bug. I called to cancel our class, citing the contagious stomach flu as the reason. I received a response that my $170 was non-refundable, as per the cancellation policy. Their stance was that the cancellation policy was shared during registration, and then emailed to me again a few days before the class (which ended up in spam)... which means little when you wake up that day with a stomach flu. While their policy states they will try to accommodate any emergency cancellations, this was not how things unfolded. We missed the class (obviously), and lost out on $170. We won't be registering...

I really like the instructors - they are amazing! However, today is the 2nd time I was not able to go to class as there was no parking. At all. I mean like for blocks. I once parked across the way in the grocery store parking lot and had to pay a steep fine. So... The course is $220 for 8 classes and I've been unable to attend 2 classes so I have lost $55 plus the work I began is now lost. I know the City Arts Centre is not going to lose any sleep over this review but anyone thinking of attending classes there needs to be aware of the challenges. (There is no direct phone so when I pulled over to see if someone could assist me, I got the City of Edmonton and was put on hold for a long...