Bluff Strokes is a competition amongst plein air (in the open air) artists, who will come paint Dubuque for the week of October 8-14, 2017. We will award approximately $10,000 in prize money. Each artist has their favorite scenes to paint: landscapes in the rolling hills, historic downtown buldings, river scenes or the Arboretum. The artists who came in 2016 were blown away by the variety that Dubuque offers.

DubuqueFest Fine Arts Festival is an annual all arts festival located in the heart of historic downtown Dubuque, Iowa in Washington Park and on the Town Clock Plaza. As a multi-faceted arts festival, DubuqueFest is a project with a variety of goals, all of which share in the general aim of raising awareness and participation in the arts while offering economic opportunity to working artists.

Established in 1977, Dubuque Fine Arts Players’ one-act play contest is the oldest in the United States. The contest now receives entries from around the country and around the world. The Dubuque Fine Arts Players contest is unique in that our readers will return their comments and criticisms to our authors. Many of our authors have found these reviews invaluable to their writing process.

Trainwreck Productions began in 2008, opening its first production in May 2009, to provide young theatre craftsmen an outlet to create avant-garde theatre, take risks… and screw-up!  Since then, TWP’s mission has focused onto found-space and original productions.  Trainwreck Productions became an affiliate program of the Dubuque County Fine Arts Society in 2013.

The Dubuque County Fine Arts Society opened the new Nash Gallery, located at 371 Bluff Street (above Monks Kaffee Pub) in April 2013. The Nash Gallery gives the Dubuque County Fine Arts Society a meaningful, permanent presence in downtown Dubuque’s cultural district and serves as a creative hub for the organization and its affiliates. The gallery’s programming supports the mission of DCFAS to encourage, promote, and present local and regional arts by providing an exhibition space and network for emerging and pioneering artists.

The Dubuque Area Writers Guild began as a group of writers who wanted to share their work with other writers and lovers of the written word. The Writers Guild also publishes an annual anthology of creative writing and art by local writers, the release of which coincides with a public reading at DubuqueFest each May.