This year’s festival is honoured to “Illuminate the Four Corners”: the intersection of Main and Hastings Street and the very [...]]]> It is our pleasure – on behalf of our associate and community partners and the artists and residents of our community – to welcome you to the 6th Annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival.

This year’s festival is honoured to “Illuminate the Four Corners”: the intersection of Main and Hastings Street and the very heart of our Downtown Eastside community. These four corners are the cross-roads for all its mini-neighbourhoods – Gastown, the Main and Hastings corridors, Chinatown, Strathcona, Japantown (Powell Street) – as well as for the city of Vancouver.

We invite you to join us at the festival’s events – over 100 in all – at the four corners and throughout the historic mini-neighbourhoods: from the Sandy Scofield Band to Comedy Night at the Carnegie Centre, to forums and historical walks, to Khac Chi Bamboo Music and an afternoon honouring DTES poet Bud Osborn. We’re also pleased to host the Downtown Eastside Music Theatre Showcase, with 30 songs from seven music theatre productions produced for, with and by the community since 2002; Illuminating the Four Corners, an outdoor multi-level evening at Main and Hastings featuring visual projections on buildings and windows and Downtown Eastside faces and voices; and the Downtown Eastside Arts4All Institute, an intensive course on everything you need to know to undertake a community art project.

Please join us as we illuminate the four corners, this community and this neighbourhood: we’re all standing proud to say – “this is who we are, this is our community, we are here.”

A big, big heartfelt thanks to the extraordinary festival staff and community members who have worked so hard and with such dedication to present this festival.

See you at the festival!

Terry Hunter, Executive Director
Savannah Walling, Artistic Director
Vancouver Moving Theatre