Vancouver Moving Theatre’s 23rd annual Heart of the City Festival will bring more than 100 arts and culture events to over 30 local venues in the Downtown Eastside next month, anchored by the theme “Belonging.”
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The 23rd annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival will return to Vancouver next month with more than 100 arts and culture events spread across 30 local venues, organizers say. The festival, produced by Vancouver Moving Theatre, is rooted in the neighbourhood’s community and is presented as a platform for stories and artistic practices shaped by lived experience.
This year’s programming theme, “Belonging,” is described as an exploration of what it means to feel seen, heard, respected, and valued. Organizers frame the festival’s work as something created collectively, citing experiences of sharing stories, laughter, grief, and joy as part of building belonging together.
For 23 years, the Heart of the City Festival has been based in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, focusing on listening and learning from the community. The festival is presented as rooted in collaboration with the Downtown Eastside community, carrying forward narratives that include ancestral memory, cultural traditions, and lived experiences.
The event calendar is set to include a wide range of formats, with organizers listing music, poetry, theatre, ceremony, film, dance, readings, forums, workshops, and discussions. The festival is also described as featuring gallery exhibits, art talks, and history tours, alongside other arts and culture activities.
Among the highlighted theatre offerings is Electric Company Theatre’s new play, Epigone. The production is described as a modern myth dealing with complicated grief, stigmas of addiction, and responsibilities to the dead, and it will run for two weeks at the Russian Hall.
Epigone’s selection is positioned within the festival’s broader emphasis on dignity and respect, with the play’s subjects aligning with the festival’s “Belonging” theme. Organizers describe the theme as a reminder that everyone deserves to be treated with compassion and respect for who they are.
The festival’s visual arts component includes Reimagining Justice: The Circle Project, a series of three video installations created by The Circle Project. The Circle Project is described as a Vancouver-based association of artists and people with lived experience of incarceration, working to create provocative art.
Reimagining Justice: The Circle Project is part of the festival’s plan to bring multiple art forms into conversation, according to the announced lineup of talks and exhibitions. The inclusion of video installations reflects the festival’s stated emphasis on a variety of mediums and formats for engaging audiences in community-focused themes.
Another featured element is Life at OPS, a collection of videos by Nathaniel Canuel. The videos are described as aiming to raise awareness about the importance of the Overdose Prevention Society (OPS), linking the festival’s arts programming to public-facing health and harm-reduction conversations.
Organizers say the Heart of the City Festival works with and for the Downtown Eastside community to illuminate pathways of resilience. They characterize the festival’s goal as bringing forward the community’s stories and cultural memory through artistic practice, including the kinds of experiences the festival says are often lived rather than represented.
With programming spanning theatre, video installations, and other arts activities across more than 30 venues, the festival is positioned as a citywide destination anchored in a specific neighbourhood. For Vancouver residents, the announcement signals an opportunity to access extensive arts programming in the Downtown Eastside while engaging with themes of dignity, respect, and belonging that organizers say are central to the festival’s mission.
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