Our Mission
We’re building a joyful & social community, connected by music.
Public Disco is a Vancouver non-profit dedicated to transforming unconventional urban spaces into dancefloors, connecting communities through shared musical experiences. We produce block parties, Pride celebrations, and free and ticketed dance music events that reimagine how public space can be used. By making music and community culture more visible and accessible in a city often labeled a no-fun zone, we create opportunities for people to gather, move, and connect—whether they’re immersed in Vancouver’s underground music scene or stepping onto the dancefloor for the first time.
Our VALUES.
Honour the Roots of Disco.
We spotlight Black, Latinx, queer, and other marginalized artists while creating safer public dancefloors rooted in disco’s history
Promote Social Connection.
Our block parties and music events bring people together across backgrounds, fostering a shared sense of belonging
Enhance Access to Culture.
By offering free and ticketed events in public spaces, from Granville Island to Downtown and Mount Pleasant, we provide platforms for local DJs and performers to reach broader audiences.
Reflect Diversity.
Our programming showcases the many sounds of Vancouver’s underground music scene while celebrating cultural richness across communitie
Exemplify Urban Innovation.
We transform plazas, laneways, and streets into cultural venues, demonstrating how public space can host inclusive music events that shape the city’s future.
Our Ethos: Honouring Disco and Queer Dance Culture
Public Disco is inspired by the roots of dance music, shaped in underground spaces where Black and queer communities built culture, resistance, and joy. Our name pays tribute to disco—not just a genre, but an ethos where dancefloors became sites of connection, freedom, and social change. We carry that legacy into today’s block parties and dance music events, using public space as a platform for self-expression and collective celebration. Queer programming remains central to our work, and we continue to create space for communities often excluded from mainstream nightlife. By embedding these values into our events, we help normalize queer expression and make public space more inclusive for people to connect and be themselves.
Collaboration and Community
Public Disco exists to bring music into public life in unexpected ways—across genres, backgrounds, and experiences. Our events celebrate the depth of dance music, from its foundations to its evolving sounds, while creating spaces where different scenes can intersect naturally. We see value in being a bridge: connecting underground music and culture with broader audiences who may not typically engage with it.
Our block parties are co-created with community, ensuring that the artists we showcase reflect the diversity of Vancouver’s music scene. Many subcultures operate in isolation, and we work to build spaces where they can overlap—where audiences and artists share experiences across different corners of the culture.
This work is possible through collaboration. Partnerships with curators, event workers, property owners, and civic agencies allow us to reimagine plazas, laneways, and cultural landmarks as dancefloors. They also make it possible to fund free programming, keeping access to music and public space open regardless of financial barriers.
Celebrating Vancouver as a Music City
Vancouver has a long history of underground music spaces, from queer bars and DIY venues in the West End and Yaletown to clubs that carried disco and house into the 1980s and ’90s. Many of those spaces have since disappeared, challenged by redevelopment, shifting city dynamics, and a lack of cultural infrastructure. Today, dance music in Vancouver continues to move from space to space, often popping up in temporary or pre-development sites. The scene remains active but hidden from public view. Public Disco responds by creating new gateways into this culture—block parties in high traffic spaces like Granville Island, Downtown, and Mount Pleasant, that activate plazas, laneways, and cultural landmarks. By making dance music visible in public space, we honour the city’s past while opening the door for more people to connect with the music community that exists here today.
Our History in Vancouver’s Music Scene
Public Disco is built by a team that has been shaping Vancouver’s music scene for over a decade. Before launching Public Disco, we created projects like Groundwerk, a listening party for local producers, and Some Kind of Music Blog, which highlighted emerging electronic artists and threw underground pop-ups across the city. Since 2017, Public Disco has produced block parties across Vancouver—including Granville Island, Mount Pleasant, and Downtown—and collaborated on stages at Vancouver Pride, Vancouver Mural Festival, and other cultural events. These experiences reinforce our belief in partnerships: by working with organizations and communities who share our vision, we keep dance music visible in public space, create low-barrier cultural programming, and support local artists and industry professionals.
Blanketing The City: Lighting The Way by Debra Sparrow for VMF Winter Arts Festival
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
At Public Disco Society, we recognize that our events and gatherings primarily take place on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Additionally, we acknowledge that we are sometimes contracted to host events on Indigenous lands outside of these territories. We honor and respect the Indigenous peoples who have stewarded these lands for generations and continue to do so today.
We acknowledge that the land on which we operate, celebrate, and build community is stolen land. Our events and parties are held in public spaces that have been home to Indigenous Nations long before the arrival of settlers. As team members, it is our responsibility to tread softly on the land and respect it, always leaving the spaces we occupy better than how we found them. We encourage all members of our community to take this acknowledgment to heart, reflect on its significance, and actively engage in respectful and meaningful actions that support Indigenous sovereignty and rights.
Public Disco Society is dedicated to making this acknowledgment a living practice, ensuring that it informs and enriches all our activities and interactions.