IGNITE! Youth-Driven Arts Festival 2022 May 18-22

The Cultch presents

IGNITE! Youth-Driven Arts Festival 2022

Western Canada’s largest youth-run arts festival

WHEN: May 18th to May 22nd 2022

WHERE: Historic Theatre at The Cultch, 1895 Venables Street, Vancouver, BC.

TICKETS: Tickets are by donation, with a sliding scale of $0, $5, $15, $20, and $500. Single tickets are on sale now through The Cultch’s Box Office: 604-251-1363 or tickets.thecultch.com.

IGNITE! Festival brings a week of youth run programming to The Cultch (Unceded Coast Salish Territories/Vancouver, BC) – The Cultch’s Youth Panel are thrilled to announce that this year’s IGNITE! festival will be taking over The Cultch’s Historic Theatre— with youth-led programming and new work by local emerging playwrights— from May 18th to May 22nd 2022. This will be IGNITE!’s 20th Anniversary of in-person events.

IGNITE! is an eclectic festival, programmed and curated entirely by members of the Youth Panel at the Cultch. It features theatre performers, filmmakers, writers, poets, dancers, musicians, VR and visual artists — all aged 13-30 — as well as participants from the Cultch mentorship programs. Celebrating its 21st Anniversary, the festival also includes the production of three new One Act Plays by local emerging playwrights and a VR and Visual Arts exhibition. Each of the main festival nights offer a diverse spread of performances in a variety-show style under a theme; from Dew Drops and Summer Daze to Lightning Strikes. Performances this year include short plays, monologues, spoken word and poetry, live music, original contemporary dance, experimental cinema, among many others. In addition, we will have a VR-stand and lobby activations every night of the festival, so make sure to come early!

And here’s some quotes from some of our artists about the festival:

“IGNITE! is a wonderful opportunity for new artists to share their voices and have a tangible goal to work toward with their craft. I wanted to be part of IGNITE! to be more active in the music community, support a youth-led initiative, listen to others and share the songs of my band, Dayshade.” - Maya Graves-Bacchus

“Performing at IGNITE! Festival will be a momentous event for me as I perform my debut EP for the very first time publicly. It’s also amazing to be part of a youth-focused event, a perfect place for us new and emerging youth artists to hone our skills in performing and expand our audience. It’s an honour to perform for this fantastic festival!” - Argel MDR

“IGNITE! to us is our big break. We as a group worked, persevered through all the obstacles that were and are thrown at us, and IGNITE! is not just a place to put all our hard work on display, but it is a time to celebrate all of our hard work.” - The Fellas