Event Description

Vancouver welcomed the Indian Summer Festival back for a second year in July 2012, and what a warm welcome it was! Engaging events, wonderful media coverage, a diverse group of committed partners and patrons, and great turnouts — even Vancouver’s reclusive sun came out!

The second year of a festival is a defining moment. We had established high standards for the festival in its first year, and now needed to meet, if not exceed, these expectations. Going into the second year, we were also conscious that we were now defining its shape and building the foundation for the future.

We scaled things up with more events, widened our already diverse audience, added new programming components, built stronger partnerships, focused on financial viability, grew our core team, created needed forums where gaps existed, and nurtured our growing community. We expanded our festival hub at SFU’s Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, spilling out onto Hastings Street with a public art installation by Raqs Media Collective, and spreading through the iconic Woodward’s Complex into the atrium and W2 Media Cafe with a community lounge serving up an Indianinfused menu alongside a stunning street photography exhibition. Our growth continued all the way to SFU’s landmark Surrey campus, where Bollywood icon Sharmila Tagore captivated the audience with tales from her career through five decades of Indian Cinema.