Heart of the City 2020 looks a little different this year, but a lot has been happening!

This year, we had a pop-up concert and Facebook livestream at Mainstreet Park in Inglewood. The show was held outside, with the stage under a grand old tree. We featured the comedy of up-and-coming stand-up comedians Leo Langford, Brad Semitux, and Britney Campbell. We also heard music from emerging artists Benjamin Williams and Dempsey Bolton.

On the first weekend of June, we held livestreams on Facebook with singer-songwriters Donna Durand and Rebecca Lappa. We also featured the music and art of some of Edmonton’s most talented youth, including Shandoa Vivian & Dezmond Morningchild and Amy Polczer, with the support of CreArt Edmonton. If you would like to watch any of these livestreams, they are available on our Heart of the City Facebook page.

We held a workshop by a wonderful Edmonton writer and visual artist, Clarke. She shared with us examples of how we are influenced by mythology and helped us look at writing our own mythologies. Zach Dafoe led a workshop about diction and writing with a method he calls “Writing from the middle out!” which helped us approach our writing from a new viewpoint.

Are you wishing you had made it to one of our free writing workshops online? Not to worry – we still have two more writing workshops coming! The first workshop, on July 18, is once again with facilitator Clark. She will guide us through writing mythologies for our community! And August 1, we invite you to join spoken word artist, rapper, and community activist KazMega and poet and playwright Lady Vanessa for “Reimagining Art as a Process to Heal.” They will guide us through some examples of their artistic works to describe their methods of writing through traumatic times and give us the chance to write and share our own work. If you want to join these workshops go to our Heart of the City Facebook page and register your email address to be invited!

We Need Board Members!
Are you passionate about your community? Do you love live music, spoken word, visual arts, and dance? Are you looking for something valuable to do with your spare time? Heart of the City Festival Society is seeking new board members to fill some important roles. We are looking for a treasurer, social media director, marketing director, volunteer coordinator, and a production assistant. You need to be willing to meet once a month between September and March and once a week from March to the first weekend of June to help us vision, plan, and execute the 2021 festival! This is a great opportunity to network in the arts, hone new skills, and help your community! Please contact us at heartcityfest@gmail.com for more information about joining this volunteer, working board! We need you!

Corine Demas serves as volunteer Vice President and Spoken Word Director of the Heart of the City Festival Society of Edmonton. Corine is passionate about poetry, storytelling, and her city, Edmonton.