Arts, Culture & Creativity Month launch
Sunday, April 6 from 2PM – 4PM

Join the City of Santa Monica, Cultural Affairs Division for the local launch of April’s Arts, Culture, & Creativity Month with a celebration in partnership with Arts for LA. Stop by Annenberg Community Beach House for printmaking, an art exhibition tour, workshop, and more. The event will include a printmaking activity. Get tickets here.

Arts & Literacy Festival 2025
Saturday, April 26 from 10AM – 2PM

The City of Santa Monica, in collaboration with SMMUSD presents the annual Arts & Literacy Festival at Virginia Avenue Park. This year’s theme is “Dinosaurs!” and the event will host over thirty different community organizations offering games and activities that align with the Santa Monica Cradle to Career Building Blocks for Kindergarten (BBK) campaign. Learn more.

Art-making in Community for Healing
Saturday, April 19 from 10AM – 12PM

Enjoy a community art-making gathering focused on safety, connection, and healing, entitled Art-making in Community for Healing at 18th Street Art Center. This open studio-style gathering provides space to process our experiences as a community through creative expression, with licensed mental health and trained arts healing practitioners available for support. Learn more.

Bergamot Comedy Fest
Monday, March 31 through Saturday, April 5

Bergamot Comedy Fest is a week-long comedic arts festival at Bergamot Station Arts Center where comedy and culture collide through curated programming. Learn more.

Barnyard Madness with the Three Little Pigs
April 12 – June 29

Join Santa Monica Playhouse for family musical comedy, Saturdays at 2PM and Sundays at 12:30PM. Audience participation, photo opportunities, and a fun, zany musical experience.

Healing Through Dance & Poetry
Sunday, April 27 from 11AM – 3PM

Join a day of healing and self-expression through the power of dance, music and poetry. Learn Afro-Cuban orixá dance with Laroye Aña, West African dance with Jahanna Blunt and enjoy a poetry workshop with Get Lit. Let the rhythm move you and the melodies soothe your soul as we come together to connect and rejuvenate through the universal languages of movement, words and sound. Taking place at Annenberg Community Beach House. Learn more.

Intersection with Debra Disman
Tuesday, April 1 & 15 from 5PM – 7PM

Please join 18th Street Arts Center to create & learn, express & enjoy together! Debra Disman will lead the making of fun and fantastic “Flag Books”, made of an accordion-folded spine and intimate flag pages onto which you can inscribe your own text, found or otherwise, imagery or any combination of these to tell your own story of the present moment as you are experiencing it. All materials will be provided but if you would like, please bring ephemera and memorabilia to personalize to your book. Learn more.

Montana Branch Book Group
Thursday, April 17 from 6PM – 7:30PM

This community-led, monthly book discussion group meets in person at 6PM on the third Thursday of the month at the Montana Branch Library. This book group discusses a mix of fiction and nonfiction titles, often on topics chosen from current events. To register, email library@santamonica.gov. Learn more.

Puppets & Poems
Wednesday, April 9 from 3:30PM – 4:30PM

April is National Poetry Month! Enjoy a poem-filled puppet show at Ocean Park library Branch, then make your own poetic puppet and try it out on our puppet stage. For ages 4 – 11. Learn more.

Take A Moment: An Unplugged Event
Sunday, May 18 from 11AM – 5PM

Join Annenberg Community Beach House for an unplugged series of free all-ages events focused on healing and community. Each offering invites you to luxuriate in an offline space designed for you to be in solitude or in community while you read, knit, draw, write, play games, color or… In addition to designing a space where you can simply be, we encourage you to browse a book collection curated by Friends of the Santa Monica Library. Learn more.

A Taste of Jordan: Exploring Jordanian Food
Saturday, April 5 from 11AM – 12:30PM

Chef Chris Sayegh of Layla Restaurant invites you Main Library for to join a seat at his table where he tells the story of Layla, a first-generation Jordanian cook and how she made the best food for her grandson and would inspire him to bring centuries of Jordanian cuisine to fine dining here in Santa Monica. A reception where you can taste these stories and flavors to follow. Learn more.

Teen Darning Workshop
Monday, April 7 from 4PM – 5:30PM

Join the Rediscover Center at Main Library as they teach creative and aesthetic ways to mend clothes to extend their life and to add personal flair to your much-loved fashion pieces. For ages 13 – 18. Space is limited. To register, email library@santamonica.gov. Learn more.

Adam Norton: Visiting Artist in Residence
18th Street Art Center through May, 2025

Adam Norton is an Australian artist based in Sydney. He is interested in the effects of technology and place on the human condition. His work reveals an influence in technology, science fiction, ufology and the historical presentations of these ideas. Learn more.

Art for Renewal: A Benefit Art Sale for Fire Recover
18th Street Art Center through May 18, 2025

All the proceeds will go to the LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund and every purchase directly benefits artists who have been affected by the fires, helping them rebuild and continue their vital contributions to our cultural landscape. Learn more.

FORT/ LA: The Healing the Heart of LA Design Competition
18th Street Art Center from April 28, 2025 – May 2, 2025

Curated by Matthew Nevin & Ciara Scanlan, this exhibition showcases a range of visual art forms, including performance, digital media, sculpture, and print, offering visitors a glimpse into the cutting-edge talents of contemporary artists based in Ireland and Los Angeles. Learn more.

Hilla Toony Navok: Visiting Artist in Residence
18th Street Art Center through May, 2025

Hilla Toony Navok is a Tel Aviv-based artist working across sculpture, installation, drawing, and video. Ranging from monumental sculptures to small paper pieces, her work is inherently modular, balancing between growth and collapse. Learn more.

Maj Hasager : Artist Residency
18th Street Art Center through April, 2025

Maj Hasager is a Danish artist based in Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work deals with power structures, identity, memory, architecture, and the construction of history, looking at how these interlinked phenomena are interpreted and represented culturally and spatially. Learn more.

REFRACTIONS: Contemporary Indigenous Art
Annenberg Community Beach House through May 11, 2025

Refractions, Contemporary Indigenous Art is a collection of contemporary artworks by Native and Indigenous artists from or connected to the Los Angeles region. Their work provides a deeper understanding of the present-day experience of Native and Indigenous communities, influenced by pop art, graffiti, nostalgia, and the beauty found within “the in-between” spaces of identity. Learn more.

This Suspended Moment: Redux by Jeff Beall
18th Street Art Center through June 30, 2025

Beall’s practice, often engaging with perception, layering, and the threshold between what is there and what is suggested, meets a moment where the instability of meaning is not just a theoretical exercise but a lived condition. If these are the good old days, as the title suggests, then they are days that are always arriving, always receding. The question remains: What, exactly, are we suspended in? Learn more.