National Multicultural Festival confirmed for 10-12 February in 2012.

Love that Canberra can celebrate multiculturalism. Its surprising (and great) to see how many people are out and about supporting the festival each year. Always happy to pay whatever it is in support of the stall holders who spend hours in prep time to give us a slice of their culture 🙂

Multicultural festival is an everyday thing in Australia now days. no baked spuds and rissoles to be seen here.

I feel it has gone the same way as Floriade. The same old thing every year, not enough to see relative to the number of people that show up, and they keep reducing the main attractions – as if they think we won’t notice. Any creativity and originality that it might have every had has been taken out of it. It all started going downhill when they took the Fringe away from the Street Theatre. Not just because it was awesome, but because that change showed the lack of imagination by the organisers. A good street festival should be diverse, spread out and cater for a variety of different audiences.

You cannot run a festival like that by sticking to this fixed and very limited formula. How often does one want to see the same group of traditional dancers/singers year after year? Why not showcase more current music from those countries?

I really have not much good to say about it at all. Pity to waste such an opportunity (and a big budget, I would imagine).

With stall fees now at $1950 per day – making the festival tents among the most expensive commercial real estate in the country – I think we’ll be looking forward to $10 meat-on-a-sticks and $20 mini-beers.

Judging by the last few years the multi culti weekend has just grown too big for itself, with huge pushy crowds and lack of space, obviously walking around in the warm weather eating diverse food and drink, watching performances is something that Canberrans enjoy doing, however why there isn’t more of this (and even a winter type festival ) surprises me. Can anyone tell me why a concept that has proven to be popular with Canberrans, and makes the city more vibrant, isn’t being rolled out by the ACT government more often the warmer months?..