The 7th Annual Cumberland Fungus Fest was Oct 1-4, 2026
Many many thanks to all who joined us! It was another splendiferous affair with much mycelial musing and meandering done and many mushroomy adventures had!
Can’t wait to see you next year!
Huge thanks to our incredible sponsors!
ALL EVENTS REQUIRE A FUNGUS FEST PASS.
Fungus Fest is set up like a Fringe Festival, there is a core program included with the Fungus Fest Pass and then additional registration events.
Your Fungus Fest Pass gives you access to all workshops, presentations, science pub, fungus bazaar, kids walks – it’s an epic program!
- Limited space events & materials workshops (Science Pub, Pathways to Reconciliation Workshop, felting, lino printing, kids walks) require registration but no additional cost.
- Guided walks have an additional registration of $10.
- Dinner has an additional registration of $25
All Fungus Fest Pass holders will be emailed a link to sign up for the registration events.
Walk up registrations & cash sign-ups are permitted space allowing.
EVERYONE is welcome to attend the Fungus Bazaar by donation (recommended $5-10).
Thursday Oct 1
7pm
Lower Cultural Centre – 2674 Dunsmuir Ave
Doors open at 6:30. Registered Fungus Fest Pass holders get priority seating til 6:50. Then remaining seats are open to the public for $20 per person.
CCFS Science Pub: What the F*&$k is the fungus doing? Kill me? Mate with me? Decompose me? Enlighten me?
Join us for the traditional kick off event of our Annual Cumberland Fungus Fest!
We’ll settle in with some locally crafted beers and other on-theme beverages and take in some highly stimulating and often amusing presentations from our guest experts all about their passion for fungus and forests.
Featured panelists:
Lyndsay Fraser
Randall Mindell
Erin Feldman
Adrian Oberg
Yarrow Willard
… and more!
indicates recent changes.
Friday Oct 2
3:00-4:30 pm
Harmonic Arts
Psilocybin and Mental Health discussion panel exploring traditional, contemporary and current science -based practice with knowledge holders
4:30 – 5:45pm
Lower Cultural Centre
Yarrow Willard
Medicinal Mushrooms: Ancient Allies for Modern Health
For thousands of years, mushrooms have been some of humanity’s most trusted medicines. Today, modern science is finally beginning to catch up with what traditional healing systems have known for generations. Join Master Herbalist and mushroom educator Yarrow Willard (The Herbal Jedi) for an inspiring journey into the fascinating world of medicinal fungi. We’ll explore many of the incredible mushrooms growing right here in our coastal forests, alongside some of the world’s most celebrated healing species.
4:30 – 7:00 pm
Harmonic Arts
Environmental Grief Tea Party
This panel and facilitated circle discussion will explore the experience of climate and environmental grief, how that intersects with our work and passions, how we tend to this grief, and how we might work WITH this grief in support of the natural world and our tender hearts. Join us for tea, cookies and a circle to nurture and share our grief, our fear, our hope and our dreams. Featuring counsellors, facilitators, conservation leaders, and grief tenders Cameron Carrick, Kester Reid, Sarah Wilson, Cadence Moffat McCann, Heather MacLaren, Dani Robinson and others.
90 min - 2 hours - Additional Registration Required
From Free to $10, Extra registrations are for limited space, extended programming. Pass holders will be emailed registration links. Spaces are limited and first come, first served.
Noon – 230 pm
Meet at Fungus Fest HQ to travel to site in the Cumberland Forest
Mycorestorations in the Forest with Conks
Walk with Erik Hrabovsky into the mycoverse where they pull out all the stops to discuss myceliated solutions for forest health and more. Get your hands into the works as we partner with the artist conk to break down some principles, rot some wood, and build up the soil bank for the future of our forests. Meet at Fungus Fest HQ to help carry materials to our site in the Cumberland Forest!
Noon-3:00 pm
Middle Earth Guided Walk w/ CCFS ED Meaghan Cursons and Tal Engel
Join CCFS Executive Director Meaghan Cursons & forest rehabilitation ecologist Tal Engel for a guided walk through the highly altered landscape of the Cumberland Forest’s most recent purchase area – 261 acres called “Middle Earth”. Explore post industrial forestry impacts, wildfire risk and resilience, ecosystem function and our collective hope for these lands. Allow 3 hours. We will meet at Village Park beside the BMX Track at noon.
2:00 pm
The Gifts of the Cumberland Forest
Guided Walk in the woods exploring the power of plant and fungi medicine with Master Herbalist (Herbal Jedi) Yarrow Willard
3:00 pm
Let’s Get Started! Field Mushroom ID
Join Vail Paterson for an introduction to field mushroom identification for mushroom enthusiasts of all ages and abilities.
3:00-6:00 pm
Fungus in Ecosystem Biodiversity w/ Heather Scott (forest walk then discussion circle)
A forest foray seeking to better understand the importance of ecosystem biodiversity, followed by an informal discussion. A two-part adventure. Start with the walk, then land in the Big Tent for a deeper discussion.
4:30 pm
Searching for Slime Molds (and more)
Guided Walk with Cumberland Forest “Naturalist and in Residence” Dawn Copeman. Dawn is an incredible knowledge holder who knows the Cumberland Forest, all its dark, beautiful, slimy corners like the back of her hand.
4:30 pm
Root Tip Trip: A foray with Erik Hrabovsky
We’ll follow the mycelium from root tips to decomposition, focusing on fungal ecological roles, distinguishing between the mycorrhizal to saprophytic examples present.
4:30 pm
Biodiversity and Ecology of Fungi with Erin Feldman – Let’s explore the science and wonder of mycology! We’ll encounter and observe fungi with multiple senses to understand, identify and appreciate the diversity of our local fungi and examine their important ecological relationships and behaviour.
DINNER BREAK
7:00 – 10:00 pm
Lower Cultural Centre
Join us for the annual Fungus Bazaar as part of the 7th Annual Cumberland Fungus Fest.
Tasty elixirs and cocktails, amazing fungus and forest themed artists and artisans, fireside conversations, and fungus contemplations, random acts of fungi appreciation and puppetry, fire performance, live printing, film and music from DJ Driem, Wildebeest, and a Listening Party with the Experimental Music Unit
This event is INCLUDED in the weekend Fungus Fest Pass.
Get Your Pass Now! https://www.cumberlandforest.com/fungus-fest/
The Fungus Bazaar is also OPEN TO THE PUBLIC $5- $10 admission.
Walk ups can attend The Fungus Bazaar without pass for a suggested $10 donation to CCFS
7:00 – 9:00 pm
The Big Tent
Fireside Conversation with Tom Child
Tom is the Director of Indigenous Engagement and Programs for Awi’nakola – Tree of Life, an Indigenous-led non-profit organization based in British Columbia, Canada.
7:00 pm
Registration required. FREE w/ a Fungus Fest Pass
WORMWOOD’S FOREST ADVENTURE
After dark, deep in the forest, Wormwood is on the move.
Featuring Wormwood, Raven the Trinket Collector, and the venerable Toadmaster—all brought to life as giant puppets. A family-friendly giant puppet show for curious creatures, trinket enthusiasts, and anyone who enjoys a good wiggle.
Rendezvous location will be provided to reserved ticket holders
7:30 pm
Upper Cultural Centre
“The High Lonesome” w/ David Lyon
The contemporary emergence of psychedelic substances in mainstream culture has emphasized clinical, therapeutic approaches and “guided” sessions that often discourage individual, unmediated experience and exclude the deep traditional roots from which these fungal and botanical powers emerged. While certainly not for everyone, David offers a word of encouragement and opens up an honest discussion about the rich rewards of observing tradition and the undeniable terror of traversing the underworld alone.
8:30-10:00 pm
Upper Cultural Centre
Listening Party with Paul Walde + Experimental Music Unit
Paul Walde: Mycolophonia
Acting upon a John Cage quote from 1988 in which he states “I’m sure that mushrooms in dropping their spores make a sound… It must be rather like gamelan music. It would be lovely to hear.” Mycolophonia is an attempt to record the sound of mushroom spores dropping using a laser vibrometer which is a hypersensitive measuring device that is capable of measuring minute vibrations including inaudible sound waves.
Experimental Music Unit (Paul Walde, Tina Pearson, George Tzanetakis): Music for Mycologists
Music for Mycologists is a collection of three works by the Experimental Music Unit (EMU) that explores relationships between music making and mushroom hunting, exposing the sometimes-fragile process of discovering sounds of rare and raw beauty that exist just beyond perception. Paul Walde’s Interdeterminancy (for John Cage) is a musical realization of eight large mushroom spore printed panels designed as a graphic notation. Mycelium Running, an EMU collaboration, is a multi-movement sonic study of fungi that references Paul Stamets’ book of the same title, particularly in its description of the life cycle and anatomy of mushrooms. While Tina Pearson’s Hunt (3) Chanterelles, is a set of sonic textures that reflect the sensations and attention states inspired by her mother’s ancestral mushroom hunting practice.