Powell Street Festival Society

The Powell Street Festival Society?s mission is to celebrate the arts and culture of Japanese Canadians and Asian
Canadians, to encourage Asian Canadians to take a leadership role in the development of the arts in Canada, and to foster community development through cultural events. The Society?s main objective is to produce the Powell Street Festival, Canada?s largest Japanese Canadian festival and Vancouver?s oldest community-based festival, in partnership with
artists, mainstream arts organizations, and corporations. Programming reflects a continuum of new, emerging, and senior professional artists working in literary, visual, performing, new media, and inter- and community arts fields originating from across the Lower Mainland, Canada, the
US, and Japan.

The Society has a history of presenting events which celebrate
interdisciplinarity, such as the annual Spatial Poetics (an evening of experimental and collaborative performance), which has featured such artists as Ashok Mathur, Laiwan, Eileen Kage, Noriko Tsujiko & Meesoo Lee, Wayde Compton and Jason de Couto, Baco Ohama and James B. Brown and more.

PSFS continues its commitment to promote fully accessible, enriching, educational, and entertaining arts and culture programs in the culturally underserved area of Vancouver?s Downtown Eastside. Within its programs, PSFS endeavours to offer maximum interfacing between new, emerging, and established artists and groups so that all parties may benefit from the wide range of innovative approaches, diverse audience bases, and growing calendar of public presentations.