Italian Day on The Drive for Courage

June is Italian Heritage Month and to commemorate this and the absence of the annual Italian Day festival on Commercial Drive – together with our partners, we launch Italian Day on The Drive for Courage, an initiative which embraces all those who come on board, while creating a trickle effect of activity – creatively, economically and socially. Our goal too is to highlight stories of courage throughout the initiative duration via social media and our website. In addition, we seek to encourage and drive donations to Coast Mental Health’s fundraising initiative Spread Courage, Not Fear to ensure that programs and services remain available for those battling mental illness, now more than ever.

The campaign will also program many talented local music artists, Italian-Canadian and other, reaching out with uplifting live music from moving vehicle platform(s) and rooftop patios. Very much inspired by Italy’s landscape of music and song coming from balconies and rooftops, as well as our 7pm tribute to frontline workers – the goal is to bring hope, celebration and community together in chorus, while maintaining public health safety and social gathering guidelines.

Italian Day on The Drive for Courage will launch on Friday June 26th at City Hall with a virtual celebration honouring Italian Heritage Month, and will include the first music performance of Italian Day on The Drive for Courage summer concert series, which will be live streamed. The initiative and pop-up performances will run throughout July and August. Date(s), time and location(s) will not be announced in advance in order to avoid crowd gatherings. All concerts will be filmed and released post event via social media and website. Some performances may be live-streamed, and if so – date and time will be released in advance, but no location. All music performances details and live steam links will be available here.