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Multicultural Storytelling Festival

About the Event

Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA), Hispanic Development Council (HDC), and Chinese Canadian National Council Toronto Chapter (CCNCTO) are hosting a Multicultural Storytelling Festival. The Festival was organized in hopes of building bridges between Chinese, Hispanic, and South Asian communities in the Greater Toronto Area. The event brought these communities together, under one roof, and provided an opportunity to educate each other’s culture and struggles as racialized communities. The Festival shone a spotlight on the stories of seniors and youth by facilitating intergenerational conversations throughout the Festival. Overall, it provided a safe space to seniors and youth to tell their stories and experiences of struggles, acceptance, survival, immigration, settlement, and integration.

Members of other diverse communities were also welcome to attend the Festival as their presence was an added advantage to gaining an intercultural understanding of the richness of Chinese, Hispanic, and South Asian community’s experiences. We had many people attend this event including residents of the Greater Toronto Area, media, civil society, and elected representatives.

This Festival was organized with the support of the Government of Canada’s Department of Canadian Heritage and took place on Saturday, September 7, 2019, at Albert Campbell Square from 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm

Storytelling

Stories are a collection of memories, histories, quests, and discoveries that we pass down through generations to preserve our identities. The Festival shared such stories through dynamic forms of art and culture such as dance, music, poetry, and food, and through tales of pain and perseverance. In the absence of art, our cultures suffer to survive, and in the absence of solidarity, we begin to divide. Hence, CASSA, HDC, and the CCNCTO have partnered up to share their vibrant culture to reflect the diversity of all three communities. We are expecting over 40 vendors, and non-profit and business agencies to attend the Festival.