The Public Dreams Society has spent nearly a quarter century leading thousands of people each year on ghostly lantern parades meandering through the streets between Grandview Park and Trout Lake, and it hopes its fans will be willing to follow them to somewhere new.
Last year, funding cuts and construction at the Trout Lake Community Centre prompted the organization to hold Illuminares, its family-friendly midsummer art carnival, indoors for the first time at the underground W2 facility downtown. The festival is moving back outside again this year, only this time in a neighbourhood less accustomed to being invaded by ethereal giant puppets, stilt-walkers, circus performers and tissue-paper-and-bamboo lantern-clutching hordes.
Creative director Samantha Jo Simmonds sees this years relocation to Coal Harbour as a positive step.
The whole idea is to engage a new community, a new neighbourhood who might not be familiar with our work, said Simmonds. Part of the reason to move the event was there are these neighbourhoods that really, really need creative facilitation. Commercial Drive is such a creatively engaged neighbourhood and wed love to see that work happen in other areas that are less united in terms of community. Many of our longtime supporters are saying what are you doing? Youre changing it! But we want to continue to innovate and move public art forward.
This years parade begins at 5 p.m. July 30 at Harbour Green Park and will follow the seawall to Canada Place, which by 6 p.m. will be transformed and filled with interactive art and performances.
As always, the event is scheduled to coincide with the Celebration of Light Fireworks Festival, but Simmonds said she isnt worried about the two events being in close proximity.
Illuminares and the fireworks have always fallen on the same night and somewhat deliberately because it helps us manage crowd control, she said. People who are looking for passive spectatorship should go to the fireworks, people looking for creative engagement and to be really stimulated to participate should come to Illuminares.
Simmonds said the change in venue is part of a larger attempt to raise the public profile of the Public Dreams Society in response to funding cuts by the B.C. Liberal government.
Weve gone through a bit of a rebranding initiative, she admitted. What we realized is that very few people realized it was Public Dreams that throws on these beloved events. People know of Illuminares or Parade of Lost Souls rather than the people who put it on, so it makes it really challenging for us to turn around and ask for help because were running on this annual treadmill trying to make this happen. People say what do you mean, its a free event. By branding Public Dreams more strongly and having people understand what we do and this is the benefit, it makes it much easier for us to ask for donations and sponsorship.
While donations will be accepted at the festival, she stressed the location wasnt chosen to reach into the pockets of cruise ship tourists.
The reason it starts at six is the cruise ships leave by five. Its not an event for tourists, its really an event for Vancouverites to take ownership of their space in the downtown core.
Simmonds said that the groups other signature event, the Parade of Lost Souls, will once again haunt the Commercial Drive area this October.
Twitter: @flematic
