Heart of the City Festival 2023

We are thrilled to announce the upcoming 2023 Heart of the City Festival, and a year of milestones: the 20th Festival; the 20th Anniversary of the 2003 Downtown Eastside Community Play, which led to the founding of the Festival; and the 40th Anniversary of Vancouver Moving Theatre, lead producers of the Festival.

For twenty years, the Heart of the City Festival has been grounded in the Downtown Eastside and focused on listening and learning from the cultural practices of the community. 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.