Vancouver’s Indian Summer Festival (ISF) will celebrate its tenth anniversary a little differently this year as it moves online.
Beginning on May 16, the multi-arts Festival will present a new digital offering every Saturday through July 18 at 7:01 pm PST on both Facebook and Youtube. All events are free to view or by donation.
“It’s an unusual time to be celebrating an anniversary,” says Sirish Rao, ISF’s artistic director in a media release. “But then again, we have always recognized the transformative power of the arts, and our work is all the more urgent now.”
Rao goes onto say the need for the arts and dialogue during these times is more important than ever in helping to make sense of our current predicament and imagining the future.
“In this milestone year, we’re presenting a series of carefully curated events that will help our audience feel a sense of solidarity and purpose in creating a post-pandemic world that is not a return to normalcy as we knew it, but as we can reimagine and remake it,” he continues.
Produced by the Indian Summer Arts Society, the Indian Summer Festival is a multi-arts festival featuring international and local artists curated through a South Asian lens, centred on work by culturally diverse artists.
This year’s ISF will feature an eclectic mix of events that will include everything from Grammy Award-winning musicians and emerging poets to Nobel prize-winning economists and environmentalists. The programming will span genres offering literary dialogues, intellectual debates, musical performances, and even culinary experiences.
The online Festival will kick-off on Saturday, May 16, with Beginnings – Sonic Tributes, featuring ten Vancouver musical voices. The one-hour online special features ten Vancouver musical talents shot in and around Granville Island.
The Festival continues on Saturday, May 23, with The Virus is a Wake-up Call featuring a conversation across continents between environmental activists Vandana Shiva from India and Canada’s David Suzuki.
On Saturday, May 30, poets from around the world gather online for It Could Be Verse: Poetry for a Pandemic.
Events through June and July are still to be announced.
For more information on announced and upcoming online events, visit indiansummerfest.ca.