Spring Fling Open Studios is an event which celebrates the unique creative community of Dumfries & Galloway, offering people the chance to visit and experience the studios of artists and makers across the region.   

Every late May Bank Holiday weekend, people travel to Dumfries & Galloway to meet potters and blacksmiths, painters and textile artists, photographers, sculptors and milliners, who open their studio doors. This is a place with a rich artistic heritage and a thriving contemporary visual arts and craft scene, shaped by both landscape and history. 

Spring Fling invites visitors to meet the artists and makers behind the work, see where and how it is made, and follow unexplored routes through towns and villages, past woodlands and along coastlines. It is completely free, and visitors can plan their own route across the countryside and enter any participating studio.   

In 2027, Spring Fling celebrates its 25th anniversary. What began in 2003 has grown into one of Scotland’s best-known open studio events, while keeping that same sense of discovery and welcome at its heart. 

In 2026, 111 artists and makers took part, generating almost 30,000 studio visits, and more than £250,000 was spent with participating artists. 

Spring Fling Open Studios is a celebration of making, but also of place, conversation and curiosity, the unexpected things that happen when people are invited into artists’ studios.  

Spring Fling Open Studios is produced by Upland Arts Development, supporting visual art and craft across Dumfries & Galloway