Christmas, New Year's, Valentine's Day… Winterruption Festival!
Granville Island’s excellent melting pot of food, music, theatre and art is back this month from February 17 – 19th. The weekend-long festival is a guaranteed reprieve from the dreary winter months that fall in between weeks of holiday celebrations and Vancouver’s gorgeous spring weather.
Now in its 12th year, Winterruption is offering up more food, music, theatre, film and family activities than ever before. There’s something going on in every nook and cranny of Granville Island during the festival, but here’s what we’re most excited about.
1. EAT: maple-everything at The Forge
Granville Island Public Market’s resident maple expert will be bringing in fresh sap, boiling it down and transforming it into sweet maple-y treats, including tire sur la neige, maple tea and hot maple drinking chocolate. There will also be free workshops, demonstrations and onsite sap boiling at the new festival hub, The Forge.
If maple isn’t your thing, the festival is also offering a Donut Spectacular (drool), Market Tour, Liberty Distillery Tour and a signature festival cocktail.
2. DO: Make art, watch art
Create the perfect book for your recipes, love letters and doodles by participating in the Winterruption bookbinding workshop at Opus Framing and Art Supplies. Led by artist Suzan Lee, the workshop will borrow from both Egyptian and European cultures, known for using wood covers on their books. No experience necessary! If you’re really feeling the art vibe, be sure to try Tiny Japanese Box Making or watch artist Ola Vola create her gigantic original mural throughout the festival weekend inside The Forge.
3. HEAR: the best jazz in the city all over Granville Island
Travel back in time to the heyday of New Orleans hot jazz, traditional folk songs, and smoky noir blues, or experience the sounds of the future with contemporary avant-pop masterpieces. Winterruption’s music programming is always extraordinary and this year is no exception. This is an opportunity to partake in some truly special performances.
Be sure to view all the music programming HERE.
4. SEE: the dystopian future at the Revue Stage
And you thought winter weather was dreary…Waiting for Spring is a 5-minute film loop set in a dystopian future where the agricultural economy has collapsed due to rampant forest fires. Watch as a young woman survives using nutrient-rich pomegranates as sustenance and clothing. Costumes created for the film will be on display and there will most definitely be some Pomegranate tea courtesy of the Granville Island Tea Company. There will also be an artist talk on the topic of post-apocalyptic fiction in Hollywood films.
5. LEARN: the mechanics of theatre magic at the Arts Club Production Centre
Costumes, sets, flying rigs and trap doors: these are just some of the things that make theatre production magical. Tour the Arts Club production and costume shop and learn a few tricks of the trade from Ace Martens, the Technical Director of the Arts Club Production Shop. The tour includes a very special look at the sets and costumes being created for the upcoming production of Angels in America.
While this list might keep your weekend full, there’s so much more to see at Winterruption Festival. You can view their full festival programming online. See you on the island!
Winterruption Festival
February 17 – 19, 2017
Granville Island, Vancouver BC
