Fort Langley Artists Group

Every October a sign goes up outside the Fort Langley Community Hall and the old library room fills with easels. That is the Fort Langley Artists Group, FLAG to its members, putting on its fall show. The 2026 edition was called RUST, a one-day show and sale on Saturday, October 10 with twelve artists taking part, according to the Advance Times community calendar. If you missed it, the group is a fixture and it will be back.

Thirty-odd years in the village

FLAG started in 1993. Newspaper profiles over the years credit Langley painter Barbara Boldt with getting it going, and describe a membership of somewhere between a dozen and fifteen Township artists, mostly painters with the occasional potter, who make work about everyday life around here: barns, birds, the river, the odd portrait.

A loose timeline from the clippings:

• 1993. The group forms as a collective of Township of Langley artists who want to work on their own art and push the arts in the community generally.
• 2017 to 2019. FLAG runs the FLAGstop Gallery out of the Langley Heritage Society’s old CN train station at 23245 Mavis Avenue, open weekend and holiday afternoons from May to September. Shows rotate through the summer with names like Sunlight and Shadows, Artists Choice and The Four Seasons. In 2019 the Artists Choice show hangs every painting anonymously, with the signature only revealed after purchase, and splits each $100 sale with the Langley Hospice Society.
• 2021. With the station closed during the pandemic, the group moves its spring and summer shows online, selling through its website.
• 2023. Back in person: a three-day pop-up called Pop’d Arts in the Riverside Community Room beside the Fort Pub, presented through the Township’s then-under-construction salishan Place by the River.
• 2026. The fall show at the Community Hall, RUST.

Getting in touch

The articles we read do not spell out a joining process, so the honest answer is: ask. The group’s Facebook page is the active channel, and the fall show itself is the easiest place to meet the members in person. Historically FLAG has also hung group shows at the Township Civic Facility on 65 Avenue, so keep an eye on the lobby there.

Nearby

For the contemporary, experimental end of things in the village, see Fort Gallery, which has also used the Community Hall’s old library space for shows. The Township’s new arts and heritage building is salishan Place by the River. Across Langley, the Langley Arts Council is the umbrella group, and we keep a village guide for the rest of Fort Langley.

Something out of date? Tell us.