Field Notes

5X Festival

Reimagining South Asian Futures and community Supported artistic expression

Summary

Year

2014-2020 🎉

Offerings

Strategy – Cultural positioning, crisis pivot planning, community infrastructure development, sponsorship strategy
Story – Editorial voice, campaign copy, 5XPress launch
Stewardship – Volunteer systems, youth-led anti-racism programming, femme-safe policies
Culture – Event design, artist curation, diasporic brand experience

Industry

Arts & Culture, Music, Non-profit, Festival & Events, Community Media

South Asian culture, reimagined for a new generation. We helped shape the soul of 5X Festival — from community strategy to digital storytelling, youth programs to editorial platforms. Over 30,000+ attendees, countless firsts, and a movement cemented.

Born from the legacy of the Vancouver International Bhangra Celebration (VIBC), 5X Festival is a culture-forward, youth-driven platform that champions South Asian creatives across modern stages — from underground concerts to digital zines, public plazas to pop-up art.


By 2016, VIBC was at a crossroads: rich in tradition but struggling to connect with a new generation of diasporic youth craving nuance, joy, rebellion, and political clarity. The festival needed to evolve — urgently.

That’s where the soul of Himmat Media stepped in.

Our Approach

We didn’t start as consultants. We started as community.

Our Founder, Jagreet, had lived the festival — as a youth performer, volunteer, organiser — long before leading it. That intimacy helped us hear what wasn’t being said: from disengaged volunteers to artists craving deeper care.

We engaged the community not as “audiences,” but as co-creators — through open mics, artist networking initiatives, cultural feedback loops, and digital experiments. We built bridges where there were gaps.

Our guiding mantra:
Future-facing. Culturally honest. Femme-led.


Champions — a bridge between who founded and led the festival to whom it was being reimagined for — became a living ritual of intergenerational respect and transition. This was stewardship, not erasure.

The Calling

This wasn’t just a rebrand.
It was a revolution in rhythm.

When we stepped into what was then the City of Bhangra Festival, it was clear: something sacred was ready to shift.

From the margins to the mainstage, we reimagined 5X as a youth-powered portal — honouring the elders whose culture filled our bones, and the generation before us that paved the way, while boldly building a new cultural commons for diasporic artists.

That meant translating tradition into momentum.

Selling the dream — not just to audiences, but to an older generation of funders, founders, and VIBC board members still unsure about passing the torch over our way.

Design Process & Strategy

Messaging as Movement

  • Rewrote the festival’s entire editorial voice — grounded in realness, irreverence, and relatability

  • With the support and vision of Skyrocket Digital in Vancouver, BC, founded 5XPress, a youth-run journalism hub to explore identity, culture, and politics

  • Coined language and campaign slogans that captured a shifting zeitgeist

Program Design & Brand Experience

  • Developed and led 5X Open Mic: an uncensored, intergenerational stage for diasporic expression, the first of its kind for South Asians with musical, comedy and poetic talent in the Lower Mainland

  • Led operations for high-impact showcases across music, fashion, and art — including a two-versus-two Bhangra battle and a femme-led musical spotlight and showcase

  • Co-created the first-ever Mil & Chill Lounge in partnership with Dil Mil, blending sponsor activation with community vibe

Program Incubation

Visual Culture

  • Leaned into and paid homage to VIBC’s OG guerrilla strategy: parody Vaisakhi parking tickets, emo Bhangra graphics, memeable reels before they were cool

  • Oversaw every visual touchpoint — from pitch decks to stage banners — keeping the politics sharp and the aesthetics rooted

Infrastructure, Internal Culture and Crisis Strategy

  • Drafted 5X’s first Festival code of conduct and femme-/queer-protective reporting system for volunteers and audiences alike

  • During the 2020 Pandemic, led the full digital pivot — ensuring not just survival, but community expansion during a time when 90% of Canada’s nonprofit and arts & culture charities were threatened with permanent dissolution

  • Designed digital programming, fundraising, and messaging for longevity

Results and impact

  • 30,000+ attendees at the 2019 5X Block Party — the highest number of attendees yet

  • Brought events operated and led by Jagreet to full capacity – setting record turnout and energy benchmarks

  • Launched 5XPress and increased digital engagement, including the highest ever off-season social media engagement at the time

  • Created new paid roles for BIPOC, femmes, and queer youth in arts administration and media industries that did not exist before

  • Cemented cultural safety protocols into the festival’s ecosystem

  • Successfully rebranded from City of Bhangra to 5X Festival with full community, stakeholder, board and funder buy-in

  • Preserved legacy, bolstered foundations, and built a future-facing movement that continues today.

5X didn’t just need a new look — it needed a new language.

And Himmat Media became the conduit.

We didn’t just rebrand.

We rebirthed — translating untold dreams into trusted design, grassroots into generational legacy.

We built a voice that felt rooted and relevant, familiar and fresh. One that honoured the ones who paved the way, while creating a soul-deep invitation to what’s next.

This was strategy as soulwork, storytelling as cultural power, and branding as generational bridgework — crafted from the margins, in service of the movement.

Related Projects/Next Steps

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