The 2020 Festival features twelve days of online and pop-up outdoor events, including music, stories, poetry, ceremony, films, readings, forums, workshops, discussions, art talks, history talks and visual art exhibitions.
Festival features:
Dalannah Gail Bowen (Blues Hall of Fame)
Downtown Eastside resident and blues queen; Jenifer Reads (Imagi’NATION Collective)
An episode from an online series of readings of heroic coming-of-age stories for youth hosted by Jenifer Brousseau
The Sandy Cameron Memorial Writing Contest, an annual event that celebrates the creative writing of Downtown Eastside-involved residents
Opening Doors, co-presented by Firehall Arts Centre and Vancouver Moving Theatre (Donna Spencer, Director). This work-in-progress is inspired by Daphne Marlatt and Carole Itter’s legendary oral history Opening Doors: Vancouver’s East End (1979), along with additional Coast Salish oral history stories gathered by Rosemary Georgeson (Coast Salish/Dene).
Artist-in-Residence Khari McClelland (The Sojourners/Freedom Singer) is curating Spotlight on the East End, a special online presentation that profiles a diverse and exciting line-up of local musicians.
The 2020 Festival theme, This Gives Us Strength, resonates today as our community copes with a worldwide pandemic, physical distancing, ongoing displacement, the fentanyl crisis, and the raw realities of bigotry and systemic racism.
Tickets and Info: www.heartofthecityfestival.com