Welcome to Halifax’s week long May Day celebration of working people and the arts.

Mayworks Halifax is a celebration of the arts and artists, of the workers and their work, that are building a culture and society that celebrates and recognizes the history and struggle of the working people of Nova Scotia. The festival is centred on May Day – May 1st – the internationally recognized workers day.

Mayworks’ goal is to promote the interests of cultural workers and trade unionists, and to bring working-class culture from the margins of cultural activity onto centre stage. We are presenting stand-up comedy, theatre, visual arts and music. We hope to make this an annual event and plan to send out requests for participation in next year’s festival as early as this summer.

The Festival is built on the premise that workers and artists share a common struggle for decent wages, healthy working conditions and a living culture. We want to build more bridges and create a true working class culture in Nova Scotia that we can be proud of – we have to create the society we want to live in.

All events are free or low cost. We want all the arts to be accessible to everyday people, so come out and join us for one or all events.

We are artists and workers, we have music from our Nova Scotian history and music from the front pages of todays paper. This celebration is intended to fill us all with joy and anger, hope and pride, determination and motivation, a sense of history, a sense of our historic moment and some visions of the future.

Check out the events listing above for a detailed list of participating artists and venues, and join us in celebrating social justice, labour and working class culture, in Halifax.