22nd Annual Downtown Eastside
Heart of the City Festival
Friday, October 31 to Saturday, November 8, 2025
Over 100 arts & culture events throughout the Downtown Eastside
Tickets and Info: www.heartofthecityfestival.com
We are thrilled to announce the 22nd Annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival!
The 2025 Festival features over 100 events across 40+ local venues, including music, stories, poetry, theatre, ceremony, film, dance, readings, workshops, discussions, art talks, history walks, and more!
We continue to be excited about the incredible artists, neighbours, and audiences who join us each year. This Festival season, we reflect on what it means to live with dignity — on unceded land and with each other. Dignity in Community honours the everyday and extraordinary ways people in the DTES community care for each other, resist displacement, and make space to belong. We celebrate the strength and creativity found in these connections and ask: What is possible when dignity is a shared foundation for us all?
For twenty-two years, the Heart of the City Festival has been rooted in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and continues to evolve — shaped and led by the voices of the neighbourhood. The Festival works with and for the Downtown Eastside community to carry forward stories, lived experiences, artistic practices, ancestral knowledge, and cultural traditions.
Join the Heart of the City Festival in celebrating the wealth of art, culture, and community in the Downtown Eastside!
A few highlights in the upcoming 2025 Festival include:
• Gerardo Avila’s theatrical performance Spirit Encounters celebrates Día de Muertos, and featuresshadow puppetry, comedy, Flamenco and Mexican dancing, and music.
• Indigenous Cultural Exhibition with dancing, drumming and community, featuring Two-Spirit Grass Dancer Larissa Healey , and Powwow Dancer Pavel Desjarlais.
• A fabulous evening of entertainment that has it all! Maraschino Tonight is a timeless variety show, part bygone house party, and part community theatre, with Reveal Yourself, a lo-fi freak music duo.
Festival Highlights – 22nd Annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival
From October 31 to November 8, the Festival brings together more than 100 events at 40+ local venues — music, stories, poetry, theatre, ceremony, film, dance, readings, workshops, discussions, art talks, history walks, and more — all rooted in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Here are ten exciting events in the upcoming 2025 Festival:
- Festival Kick-Off
Kick up your heels and get ready for a spooky time at the DTES Halloween Festival Kickoff! Dress up in your best costume, walk the red carpet, enter the costume contest to win an awesome prize, and gear up for disco-ball dancing with DJ Maxi and crew spinning tunes. Don’t miss out on a night of masquerade magic and community fun for friends and families alike — refreshments provided, and everyone is welcome! Hosted by Lance Lim of the Pigeon Den Art Collective.
Friday, October 31. 6:30pm
Carnegie Community Centre Theatre, 401 Main
Free.
- Famous Last Words
In Famous Last Words poets participate in a faux competition where they ‘battle’ in a series of rounds, ‘judged’ by Uni the Unicorn, the host, and the audience. A spoken word comedy show with a puppet poetry round, a unicorn interpretive dance, and much more. Come in costume, let’s have fun! Free chocolate! Featuring Grace Kwan, Marlo Browne, RC Weslowski, Sean McGarragle, SJ Valiquette, Spillious the Ridiculous One, and Uni the Unicorn. Presented by Death Rides a Unicorn with SFU and the Heart of the City Festival.
Friday, October 31. 7pm
SFU Djavad Mowafaghian World Arts Centre, 149 W Hastings
Free. Tickets: https://famouslastwordsheartofthecity.eventbrite.ca
- Nechako: It Will Be A Big River Again
The Festival is honoured to present Nechako: It Will Be a Big River Again , a stirring documentary by award-winning Stellat’en filmmaker Lyana Patrick. Once a lifeline for the Stellat’en and Saik’uz Nations, the Nechako River in northwestern BC was diminished when the Kenney Dam diverted 70% of its waters, displacing the Cheslatta T’En, and disrupting wildlife, land, and culture. Through stories of resistance and resilience, Nechako reveals a decades-long fight for justice and renewal. Screening followed by a special talk-back with Lyana Patrick. Presented in partnership with SFU, with film provided courtesy of the NFB.
Saturday, Nov 1. 7:30pm
SFU Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema, 149 W Hastings
$0 -$20. Tickets: https://nechako.eventbrite.ca
- Spirit Encounters
On the Day of the Dead, when the veil between the living and the dead is lifted, start your afternoon with a mask-making workshop, join a community procession to visit local ofrendas, and end the celebration at Spirit Encounters, Gerardo Avila’s latest theatrical performance, featuringshadow puppetry, comedy, Flamenco and Mexican dance, and music. Presented with puppeteers Hazel Bell-Koski and Dana Wilson, storyteller Steven Schwabl, flamenco dancers Maria Avila and Isabel Pacheco, and musicians Anna Lumiere , Peter Mole, and Graham Ord.
Sunday, November 2. 7pm
Russian Hall, 600 Campbell
Gerardo Spirit Encounters – Free
$0 – $30. Tickets: https://spirit-encounters.eventbrite.ca
- To Mum with Love XO: A theatrical triple bill
How I Met My Mother is Jonathon Paterson’s award-winning comedy about caregiving. An irresponsible bachelor answers the call to care for his ailing mother, while reckoning with his rambunctious past. Will his newfound skills be enough? It’s a true story of love, family, and the power of redemption.
The Unbreakable Popsicle Stick Gang One mom, four kids, more love than you can fit in several oceans; together they can never be broken. Join Jacques Lalonde on a fantastical journey into love, miracles, music, tears, and laughter.
How I Learned to Sing Having a musical mother involves gifts and challenges. In this twisting tale, East Vancouver-based storyteller Jim Sands explores the ups and downs of his musical upbringing in the search to find his own voice.
Wednesday, November 5. 7pm
Russian Hall, 600 Campbell
$0 – $30. Tickets: https://moms-moms-moms.eventbrite.ca
- Indigenous Exhibition and Celebration
Join us for an evening of dance, drumming, and community for all ages at the Indigenous Exhibition and Celebration. This gathering brings together Indigenous dancers from many Nations , including Larissa Healey (2Spirit Grass Dancer), Pavel Desjarlais with Dancing Spirit, who share vibrant cultural performances. The evening also features shared food and an Indigenous art market with handmade goods. Open to all—everyone is welcome!
Thursday, November 6. 6pm
Russian Hall, 600 Campbell
Free.
- Maraschino Tonight with Reveal Yourself
A fabulous evening of entertainment that has it all! In this timeless variety show, host and enigmatic entertainer Cherry Maraschino is accompanied by a ragtag crew of artists, puppets, and nefarious rascals. Part bygone house party, part community theatre, Maraschino Tonight is a playful interrogation of contemporary nostalgia. Reveal Yourself, a lo-fi freak music duo, uses trashy drum samples, distorted bass loops, and zany guitar hooks to capture audiences with its vocal laments and feminist satire. Reveal Yourself’s avant-pop hijinx offers a compact mirror from which to view this strange, shit-stained world.
Friday, November 7. 8pm
Russian Hall, 600 Campbell
$0 – $30. Tickets: https://maraschino-tonight.eventbrite.ca
- SHELTER
This original community-engaged art show features high-impact and striking visuals reflecting on housing and homelessness. With thirty marginalized, culturally and socially diverse Downtown Eastside artists, the exhibit includes city-wide transit shelter ads featuring large-scale individually-created artworks. The project is led by Gunargie Ga’axstasalas O’Sullivan and produced by Radix Theatre, in partnership with the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival.
Friday, October 31 – Saturday, November 8.
At local transit shelters near you!
- Mayor of Oz
Back by popular demand! Enjoy this hilarious and poignant community-led, grassroots play developed by Carnegie Learning Centre volunteers with support from Capilano University and the Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival. Reimagining Frank Baum’s Wizard of Oz through the lens of the DTES, Mayor of Oz explores housing instability, climate collapse, the toxic drug crisis, and gentrification, while celebrating resilience, solidarity, and community strength.
Friday, November 7 & Saturday, November 8. 1pm
Carnegie Community Centre Theatre, 401 Main
Free.
- Rhythms of Thunder: An Evening of Taiko
Experience the rare opportunity to enjoy a full evening of taiko for the Festival closing concert. This spectacular array of Vancouver taiko artists showcases a unique and thrilling lineup of Japanese drumming styles. Join us and feel the rhythm and thunder! Performers include GO Taiko and Taiko 55, the only intergenerational taiko group in BC… with more artists to be announced!
Saturday, November 8. 7pm
Russian Hall, 600 Campbell
$0 – $30. Tickets: https://rhythms-of-thunder.eventbrite.ca
Stay tuned for more Festival highlights, including:
● Finding My Own Voice, anew folk opera work-in-progress presentation by Beverly Dobrinsky
● Live Painting and DTES Art Sale, featuring Smokey D, Sober, Ken Foster, Dempsey, Elvo and more
● Theatre in the Raw presents staged readings of t wo award-winning plays from their Biennial One-Act Playwriting Contest
● many DTES walking tours
The mandate of the Heart of the City Festival is to promote, present, and support art forms, cultural traditions, history, activism, people, and great stories about Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
Hats off to our funders, partners, and sponsors:
Thanks to our many donors, funders, media sponsors for their generous support: Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage (Building Communities Through Arts and Heritage), BC Arts Council, BC Gaming (Government of British Columbia), Destination Events Program (BC Ministry of Tourism), Cultural Services (City of Vancouver), Homelessness Services (City of Vancouver), CLICK, David Lam Centre, Hamber Foundation, Community Arts Fund (Community Arts Council of Vancouver), Admiral Seymour Elementary School, Lord Strathcona Elementary School, Lepawsky Family Fund and Lulu Fund (VanCity Community Foundation), Georgia Straight, OMNI Television, City TV, and STIR Vancouver.