The 18th annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival announces 2021 program
More than 100 diverse events take place in person and online over 12 days
Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival 2021, Fancy Dancers. Photo by Tom Quirk
The Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival is thrilled to announce it’s back for 2021, celebrating its 18th year.
Presented by Vancouver Moving Theatre in association with Carnegie Community Centre, the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians, and numerous community partners, the beloved local fest takes place October 27 to November 7.
The 2021 event features more than 100 live and online events over 12 days, including music, stories, poetry, theatre, ceremony, films, readings, forums, workshops, discussions, art talks, history talks, and visual art exhibitions.
As the Downtown Eastside community begins to emerge from the pandemic, the festival is thrilled to reconnect with more than 60 of its cherished partners, including UBC Learning Exchange, Firehall Arts Centre, City Opera, KW Studios, and many more.
This year’s theme is “Stories We Need to Hear”. It’s one that resonates as the community grapples with the dramatic impact of the pandemic, ongoing displacement, the fentanyl crisis, and the reality of bigotry and systemic racism.
The festival is inspired by the compelling lived wisdom and creativity of Downtown Eastside-involved artists and residents, who illuminate the community’s diverse and rich traditions, knowledge systems, ancestral languages, cultural roots, and stories.
Among the many highlights are Art in the Streets, with surprise pop-up music and spoken word activities on sidewalks and small plazas throughout the historic district; We Live Here, a large-scale outdoor installation projecting hyper-speed videos of Downtown Eastside artists’ works, produced by Radix Theatre; and Honouring Our Grandmothers Healing Journey Launch features three days of ceremony, teachings and storytelling honouring grandmothers who travelled to the Downtown Eastside (with Further We Rise Collective and Wild Salmon Caravan).
50 Years of Creative Collaboration: Terry Hunter & Savannah Walling highlights the creative journey and artistic history of Vancouver Moving Theatre and festival co-founding directors Terry Hunter and Savannah Walling.
There’s much more. It’s all to bring to life the festival’s mandate to promote, present and facilitate the development of artists, art forms, diverse cultural traditions, history, activism, people, and great stories about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside District’s historic neighbourhoods on Coast Salish homelands, including Chinatown, Gastown, Hastings Street corridor, Strathcona, and Powell Street. The festival involves professional, community, emerging and student artists, and lovers of the arts.
More information is at www.heartofthecityfestival.com. Tickets and registration for online events will be available on the festival website in early October.
Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival 2021, Priscillia Tait. Photo by David Cooper
Post sponsored by Vancouver Moving Theatre.