Heart of the City Festival Society would like to fill you in on our Annual General Meeting in January and what happened with HOTC in 2020.

We had quite a year in 2020. The whole world was shaken up! Edmonton is known as “Festival City.” But 2020 was hard on all of us who plan and organize the festivals that make this city so vibrant and welcoming. Heart of the City decided to pull up our sleeves and pivot. We held an online festival in 2020. We hosted youth live streams run by the students of CreArt Edmonton. We hosted music live streams with Donna Durand and HOTC veteran Rebbeca Lappa! We also hosted free writing workshops with Kaz Mega, Lady Vanessa Cardona, Kat Clarke, and Zach Dafoe.

At our AGM on January 17th, we elected a new board and voted in our executive team. New to the board this year are: Brad Boyd, Mike Chenoweth, K’alii Luuyaltkw, and Stef Andrews. Returning to the board are Mike Siek, Corine Demas (me), Elizabeth McEwan, Val Squires, Sebastian Barrera, Fay Goble, and Derek Dallorto.

For our 2021 executive, we have me (Corine Demas) as President, Val Squires as Vice President, Mike Siek as Secretary, and Derek Dallorto as our Treasurer.

We are excited to share some news with you, our neighbours. We will be working with the Sarah McLachlan School of Music to offer mentorships for emerging musicians and sound techs! We are also going to be providing free admissions to writing workshops with Lady Vanessa Cardona and a professional development workshop on editing with Edmonton’s Poet Laureate Nisha Patel. There are so many things cooking in the HOTC kitchen, some we can’t yet reveal. Keep an eye open, as we will let you know about our fun plans to celebrate the arts and music of downtown Edmonton in 2021 in future editions of the paper!

Corine Demas serves as volunteer President and Spoken Word Director of the Heart of the City Festival Society of Edmonton.