2025 Stratford events

In 2025, the Provocation Ideas Festival once again brings together a remarkable constellation of voices—community members, artists, performers, musicians, journalists, storytellers, scholars, urban planners, and culinary innovators—to explore urgent questions of our time under the unifying theme: City of Dreamers. 

Maker Multiverse: Constructing Futures 

August 18 – 28, 2025 

Stratford Public Library 

19 St. Andrew St, Stratford, ON 

Join us for this exciting Provocation Ideas Festival/ Stratford Public Library/BMI Group event!!  Drop in to help build an interactive, large-scale model of our local landscape. Collaborate with others to blend real landmarks with imaginative visions of what our community could become. 

 Using recycled materials, LEGO, robotics, and digital tools, this hands-on experience encourages creativity, sustainability, and STEAM learning while inspiring participants to envision and shape our community's future together.  

 Each session includes dreaming, designing, and creating using prompts and vision boards, plus brief show-and-tell segments where participants and community partners share progress and ideas. Show-and-tell sessions are recorded on green screen, virtually transporting presenters into the city model. Highlights will be published on SPL's YouTube channel to celebrate community creativity and collaboration. 

 Ages 6+. Makers under age 12 must be accompanied by a parent or guardian.  

Questions? Email Eric at makerspace@splibrary.ca or call 519-271-0220 x164 

For more details, please visit: Maker Multiverse: Constructing Futures | Stratford Public Library 

This fall, Constructing Futures continues, inviting community members of all ages to shape bold new visions for Stratford. In October 2025, join urban planners, sustainability experts, and design thinkers for a panel discussion where your imagination takes the lead. After engaging with inspiring ideas, you’ll have the chance to craft your own vision for Stratford’s future using the creative materials we provide. 

📍 Panel discussion: October 16, 2025   

       Copperlight/Knox Presbyterian Church, 

       143 Ontario Street, Stratford, ON. 

      Creating your vision for Stratford: October 20-25, 2025 

       Copperlight/Knox Presbyterian Church 

       143 Ontario Street, Stratford, ON. 

 
🗓️ Creations will be publicly exhibited October 27-30, 2025 
📍 Exhibition Location: Copperlight / Knox Presbyterian Church 

       143 Ontario Street, Stratford, ON. 

Dream Weavers: Stories that Transform Us 

October 4-5, 2025 

Grand Trunk Site, next to the Cooper Lot  

Step into a circle of light and story. 

Dream Weavers transforms Stratford’s historic Grand Trunk site into a glowing village of ten intimate tents, each one home to a powerful tale of transformation, hope, and the dreams that shape who we are. Inside each softly lit space, local storytellers share personal stories that reflect the heart of our region—its turning points, quiet awakenings, and bold aspirations. Audiences of 3-4 are invited into each tent for a close, immersive experience unlike any other. 

After each story, participants are invited to respond—through words or drawings—on colorful acetate sheets that become part of a growing installation inside each tent, weaving together the dreams of many into one luminous community tapestry. Guiding questions like “What moment changed everything for you?” spark both introspection and connection. With storytellers of all ages, including dedicated tents for young voices, Dream Weavers is a celebration of imagination, resilience, and shared futures. 

This is a free, all-ages event. 

Co-presented by the Trophy, City of Stratford and investStratford in collaboration with Pathways To Poetry Festival and Stratford Writers Festival. 

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Flavours of Home: Stories and Meal that Connect Us 

An intimate series celebrating Stratford’s newest voices 

Events will take place from October 2025 through March 2026 

Locations - TBC 

Food tells a story—and at Flavours of Home, every bite invites you into one. This unique series of culinary storytelling events honours the experiences of Stratford’s newcomers through the universal language of food. Each gathering features a local individual or family who prepares a meal inspired by their region of origin, sharing not only recipes, but the deeply personal journey that brought them here. 

As guests savour the dishes, they hear moving stories of migration, resilience, and belonging—from the first steps into a new country to the dreams that take root in a new community. Held in welcoming venues across Stratford—from restaurants, bars, schools and pop-up kitchens—Flavours of Home offers a space to gather, listen, and connect across cultures through the power of shared meals and shared humanity. 

Funny Business: Comedy as the Canadian Shield 

A live comedy event followed by CBC IDEAS · Hosted by Nahlah Ayed 
 
Date and time to be confirmed

What happens when some of Canada’s sharpest comedic minds take on the myths, contradictions, and quirks of Canadian life—live? 

The gloves come off and the laughs roll as a celebrated and award winning comedian hits the stage for a no-holds-barred performance of comedy, satire, and gut-busting honesty. From maple syrup clichés to the complexities of cultural identity, she’ll riff, react, and reinvent what it means to be Canadian. 

Expect razor-sharp wit, fearless storytelling, and wildly unexpected turns in this one-night-only performance. This is Canada as you’ve never laughed at it before. 

Following the performance, join CBC IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed for a sharp, hilarious, and thought-provoking evening exploring the role of comedy in shaping Canada’s national identity. From political satire to everyday absurdities, comedy has long served as a kind of Canadian shield—deflecting, reflecting, and revealing who we are. 

In this live panel event, some of the country’s funniest minds delve into how humour and satire can expose national truths, challenge cultural myths, and unite us through laughter. Together, they’ll explore questions at the heart of our comedic culture: 

• What can satire reveal about who we are as a nation? 
• How do comedians complicate the stories we tell about ourselves? 
• And why is laughing at ourselves such a quintessentially Canadian act? 

Presented in partnership with CBC IDEAS as part of the Provocation Ideas Festival, this is an evening of insight, irreverence, and maybe even identity redefinition—served with a punchline. 

Tickets will be available soon 

PAST EVENTS

May 31, 2025

No Other Land

No Other Land , the 2025 Academy Award-winning Best Documentary Feature, offers a powerful, firsthand account of the Israeli military's efforts to forcibly displace Palestinian communities in Masafer Yatta, a region in the occupied West Bank. Co-written and co-directed by Palestinian filmmaker, lawyer and journalist Basel Adra, Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham, Palestinian photographer Hamdan Ballal, and Israeli cinematographer Rachel Szor, the film documents the demolition of homes, destruction of schools, and the filling of water wells with cement to prevent Palestinians from rebuilding on their native land. Through intimate footage and personal narratives, No Other Land captures the resilience of the Palestinian people and the complexities of Israeli-Palestinian relations, offering a poignant exploration of resistance, identity, and the human cost of occupation.

Following the screening of No Other Land , there will be a discussion and Q&A session with seasoned Canadian journalist Jesse Rosenfeld, who has extensively covered wars, occupations, revolts, and resistance in the Middle East, including Israel and Palestine, for outlets such as Rolling Stone Magazine,The Daily Beast, The Nation, The Intercept, and Al Jazeera English. His journalism is the basis of the National Film Board of Canada documentary, Freelancer on the Front Lines. The discussion will be moderated by Deanna Horton, Distinguished Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and former Canadian diplomat. 

Saturday, May 31, 2025  4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. - SOLD OUT

Saturday, May 31, 2025  7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. - SOLD OUT

Stratford City Hall Auditorium Theatre

1 Wellington St, Stratford, ON N5A 2L3

Presented in partnership with the Stratford Film Festival.