The 2024 Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival is here! Running to November 10th presented by Vancouver Moving Theatre in association with the Carnegie Community Centre & the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians and a host of community partners:
Over 100 events throughout the Downtown Eastside and online
For twenty-one years, the Heart of the City Festival has been grounded in the Downtown Eastside and focused on listening and learning from the community’s cultural practices. The Festival works with, for and about the Downtown Eastside community to carry forward our community’s stories, ancestral memory, cultural traditions, lived experiences, and artistic processes to illuminate pathways of resistance and resilience.
Guided by the theme Threads of Connection, the 2024 Festival features 100 plus live and online events showcased at 40 plus local venues over twelve days – both indoors and out – including music, stories, poetry, theatre, ceremony, films, dance, readings, forums, workshops, discussions, gallery exhibits, art talks, history walks and more.
This 2024 Festival is also a special ‘turning of the wheel year’. As fall rolls into winter and winter rolls into spring, Vancouver Moving Theatre / Heart of the City Festival co-founders Terry Hunter, C.M. and Savannah Walling, C.M. are announcing their retirement as of July 2025 following their final 2024 – 2025 season with Vancouver Moving Theatre.
Terry and Savannah are ending their tenure as festival directors with gratitude to the community of the Downtown Eastside as they pass stewardship of the festival on to new leadership: 21 years of celebrating the community of the Downtown Eastside; 21 years of sharing its cultural wealth; 21 years nourishing connections; and, 21 years amplifying voices and concerns. An extraordinary journey that just keeps on going.