\ 7pm InterUrban, 1 E. Hastings • Day of the Dead Procession, Wed Nov

rs" Annual Downtown Eastside Heart of the City Festival We're onlv half wa~ through! Many more activities Nov 1st - 6th

IN PERSON, FREE • Hearts Beat lOll, Tues Nov 1s t, 7pm Carnegie • Art is Vital, Illicit Projects, Tues Nov 1S \ 7pm InterUrban, 1 E. Hastings • Day of the Dead Procession, Wed Nov 2

nd , 3pm Watari, 678 E. Hastings • DTES Wise: I-Witness livestreams by Gunargie,

FestivalOpeninqNight {Heidi Margan. BticeTabisb,GordStewart) photo TomQuirk Thurs Nov 3rd , 1pm InterUrban Gallery, 1 E. Hastings entrance on Carrall • Sound Media, Thurs Nov 3rd , 3pm, 4pm, 5pm 6pm Lobe Studio, 713 E. Hastings • We Are Somebody: Celebrating the Creative Spirit in the DTES, Thurs Nov 3, 7pm n~ca (mat et Strathcona Branch, 730 E. Hastings • Film Day, Fri Nov 4th, 1pm Angels On Call; 3pm Jean Swans on: We Need a New Map & Militant Mother; 4pm Love in the Time of Fentanyl; 7pm Alice Street, Carnegie Theatre • Drums, Singing, Dancing, Fri Nov 4th, 4pm Starchild; 5:30pm Medicine Creek; 7pm Dancing Spirits, ·lnterUrban Gallery, 1 E. Hastings entrance on Carrall • We Uve Here, Fri Nov 4th , 7pm Gallery Gachet, 9 W. Hastings • Poetry & Spoken Word Day, Sat Nov 5th , 1:30pm Mutiel's Journey Poetry Prize; 4pm Sandy Cameron Memorial Writing Contest Award Ceremony; 7pm Honouring Writers of the Downtown Eastside, Carnegie Theatre, 401 Main • Festival Finale: Co-op Radio live at the WISE Hall, Sun Nov 6th , 6pm Community Open Mic; 8pm Dusty Pines, MNGWA, Wise Hall, 1882 Adanac COMMUNITY TICKETS,FREESign up at Carnegie Front Desk • IRONFEST111-Thurs Nov • The Prop Master's • Together in Peace - Sun 3, 8:30pm; Fri Nov 4 & Sat Dream - Sat Nov 5, 2pm & Nov 6, 3pm, Ukrainian I'(ov 5, 9:30pm, The 7pm, Annex Theatre, 823 Hall, 805 E. Pender Ironworks, 235 Alexander Seymour Many more fREEexciting events during the upcoming days of the festival!

Find the Festival Program Guide at Carnegie Centre and at locations throughout the neighbourhood. For complete Festival details, visit - www.heartofthecityfestival.com.

:jr ' .I.. Openin~Ceremony The 191 Annual Heart ofthe City Festival opened on Wednesday, October 26 in the Carnegie Community '1 1.. Centre's theatre. The welcome drumming was done by Love Medicine. ' ,. Bob Baker, an elder from the Squamish Nation, welcomed all with a song about building community and Terry .'. Hunter, executive producer of the Festival, was master of ceremonies. Both Bob and Terry acknowledged the ~I life and Larissa times of Healey, Kat Norris, featured on Elder-in-Residence for the festival for the the cover of the program guide this year, last few years. performed her grass dance in full regalia.

Her words helped show the inextricable link between her native language and all the cultural protocols acted out in the dancing. One cannot exist without the other. And, as has been attested by a local organization, culture saves lives.

Carnegie's own lexwst'i:lem Drum Group performed and acknowledged the sad news ofStanley Paul's passing. They ended their presentation with a song for the children who never returned from residential schools.

One ofthe highlights ofthe opening was the additional panels of the Festival mural, with Richard Tetrault and fellow artists who added 3 more panels to honour other persons in the Downtown Eastside community. Following are words by Gilles Cyrenne - his 'morning page' written the day ofthis opening ceremony:

Community is My Mentor

(Talk given at beginning of Heart of the City Festival)

Woke up thinking about the delusions of individualism this morning. In every moment of our lives from conception to death, with every breath, in every step that moves us, we depend on community in small and big ways. We begin helpless in community offamily: all the caring we receive - a gift from parents expecting nothing in return. This gift from community keeps on giving. This fountain pen I hold revising these morning pages: how much community went into creating it? Who mined the metal for the nib and grip? Who designed it and drafted a plan for craftspersons to build a prototype? Which person in what factory assembled it? Somebody worked on an oil rig to produce the plastic that forms my pen's body. Somewhere there is a factory that produces the ink and there's a store up the street, The Pen Shop, where people work who sold me"my special morning pages pen. In order to buy it, a money system backed by a government central bankl supports me. (Don't get me going on how far away from the world of gift our politics and economics have strayed with their expertise in monetizing everything- that's another story) Here at Carnegie a community who inspires my writing supports me. We are all connected. My nephew who builds pipelines in Alberta from where the plastic originates, the clerk in The Pen Shop, and everybody in this room are a part of these words I write. And we are here enjoying a festival with multiple free events - a gift from community. Think also of e~erything and everybody who collaborated to enable this gathering: the original community play, organizers and staff of the festival, the carpenters who built this floor some 120 years ago, everyone who has ever walked here, community activists who saved this space for us. None of this is possible without all of that - all of it, a gift from the past carried into today. In life's every moment we are with community interdependent partners and mentors. Every step we take, ., everything we touch contains an entire world with a history unfolding within it which changes us as we change it. None of us ever does anything completely alone. We are never an individual thing totally apart. Individualism with its ego-centredness sometimes deludes us that we are the great hero actor in our own drama, but that's all just a magnificent delusion which forgets we are living in gratuities that surround life's every moment.

Hum: University Set Free

Interested in taking a 13-week Creative Writing course at UBC?Humanities 101 Community Programme (Hum) offers free university-level courses for low-income people who live in and around the Downtown Eastside and Downtown South. Meeting on Tuesday nights from mid-January to April 2023, in Writing 101 and Writing 201 we learn and practice a new genre of writing with a different teacher every week. Classescover creative fiction and non-fiction, poetry, song writing, Indigenous literatures, manifestos, comedic forms, collaborative writing, book reviews and more. Participants receive school supplies, UBCcards, meals, bus tickets to get to and from UBCPoint Grey campus where classesare held, and childcare funding if needed.

Hum courses are for people who have encountered financial and other barriers to university education and who wish to expand their intellectual horizons in an accessible, challenging and respectful environment. Applicants must have a love of learning, basic literacy skills and be willing to attend classes,complete assignments and participate in group discussions. Applications for these non-credit courses are accepted not on the basis of past academic history, but on the applicants' desire and ability to be part of the Hum Programme. Visit the Hum website for more information, humanities101.arts.ubc.ca, or contact h.u.m@ubc.ca I 604-822-0028.

To find out more about Writing 101 or Writing 201 and to apply for the course you must attend an upcoming information/application session:

" • TThe Gathering Place, 609 Helmcken St. (meeting room) Saturday November 19th at 11:00 a.m.

Carnegie Centre, Main and Hastings St. (third floor classroom) Saturday NO'{8mber19th at 2:00 p.m.

Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, 302 Columbia St. (women only) Wednesday November 23rd at 3:00 p.m.

Vancouver Public Library naOca7mat ct Strathcona Branch, 730 E. Hastings St. (Nellie Yip Quong Room) Wednesday November 23rd at 6:00 p.m.