Vancouver Moving Theatre’s Storyweaving event in partnership with the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Centre. Photo by Mark Montgomery
Vancouver Moving Theatre is an award-winning professional multi-arts company cofounded in the Downtown Eastside in 1983 by executive director Terry Hunter and artistic director Savannah Walling. It’s devoted to creating art that celebrates the power of the human spirit; builds shared experiences that bridges cultural traditions, social groups and artistic disciplines; and gives voice to residents of the Downtown Eastside and beyond.
From 2000, VMT has focused on professionally produced, pioneering arts-based community-development projects tailored with, for, and about the Downtown Eastside community, Situated on unceded Coast Salish territories, the Downtown Eastside is made up overlapping historic districts and is home to one of Canada’s largest Indigenous “unofficial urban reserves”, the second largest historical Chinatown in North America, and to a succession of immigrant residential communities. Highlights have included its multi-disciplinary annual flagship event, the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival, launched in 2004. It has grown into a 12-day festival that features hundreds of artists and residents at over 100 events at over 45 venues throughout the Downtown Eastside.
Other highlights have been the Strathcona Artist at Home Festival (1999-2004); a clown-based A Downtown Eastside Romeo and Juliet (2008); and several tributes to the East Side’s Black, Indigenous, Japanese, and Ukrainian communities, including East End Blues and All That Jazz (2008-2018); Storyweaving (2012); Against the Current (2015); Bread & Salt (2013); and the national tour of Weaving Reconciliation: Our Way (2018), in collaboration with Indigenous and non-Indigenous partners across the country.
Throughout, VMT builds partnerships to copresent multi-arts events and projects for diverse audiences; and provides cultural services, information, educational and legacy resources. It has a long history of collaborating with artists of many genres, techniques and cultural traditions. The company regularly partners with arts and non-arts organizations with an eye to experimentation, accessibility and community-engagement.
Vancouver Moving Theatre received the 2008 City of Vancouver Cultural Harmony Award, and Hunter and Walling are recipients of the 2008 British Columbia Community Achievement Award, the 2009 Vancouver Mayor’s Award – Community-Engaged Art, and the 2013 Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal.
