Theme 2012- ‘Pako turns 30’ .

Pako Festa, now in its thirtieth year, is Geelong’s much loved, award-winning, free, annual community arts festival - the biggest of its kind in Australia. Managed by Diversitat and held on the last weekend of February in Pakington Street, Geelong West, “the multicultural heart of Geelong”, it incorporates an extravagant street parade featuring around ninety floats and hundreds of performers representing forty-five affiliated ethnic communities and around sixty other community groups and organisations. The street is lined with stalls selling traditional foods and arts and crafts, and nine separate stages in the precinct offer performances of music and dance as well as interactive workshops and exhibitions. Pako Festa has become Victoria’s premier multicultural event, attended by well over 100,000 people in each of the last three years.

As part of Pako Festa’s thirtieth birthday celebrations we are planning a number of “homages” to its history. 30 Carmen Miranda’s will lead the parade down ‘Pako’ creating colour and movement representing each of the years the great procession has transpired. Leading the way will be Jessica Costa, an extremely talented local singer and arts student who stood out at the 2011 event.

Art on Parade, a sculptural/mechanical mobile installation using recycled materials from previous Festivals and which would be a “float” leading the parade and afterwards would be dismantled into discrete “sculptures” and be transformed into a “gateway” to the festival at the end of Pakington Street, and later still put on display in various local venues for the rest of the year. Come and celebrate this milestone with the Pako Festa family. Happy 30th Birthday Pako!

Happy 30th Birthday Pako!

From 9am, the street starts filling with people who come to browse through the eclectic range of stalls selling everything from ethnic fashion to fairy wings. There are brilliant buskers, a vast spread of ethnic and local foods, and a string of roving street performers intent on keeping you smiling!

 

 

At 11am the great Pako Festa Parade commences.

The Pako Festa Street Parade starts at 11am, embodies Color, Culture & Celebration and is one of the most important events at Pako Festa! Encapsulating the very essence of our nation – diversity, dynamism and colorfulness, and above all else cooperation, community inter-connectedness, creativity and the promotion of our humanity – Pako Festa sends a strong message in these troubled times in which we live: our preparedness to interact with, work with and treat each other with dignity and respect demolishes the walls of division and conflicts; bringing everyone together in a spirit of understanding, acceptance and celebration of life itself.

 

About The Festa

Pako Festa is the largest free celebration of cultural diversity in Australia! Every year, since 1983, it attracts scores of people from our local and cultural communities, professional performers, community groups, schools, businesses, street traders and artists from all walks of life.

Coming together in harmony, up to 100,000 people meet to enjoy a smorgasbord of cultural food, folk dancing, the famous Pako Parade, workshops, art exhibitions, films, craft displays, free activities for children and an amazing day of non-stop entertainment.

Pako Festa prides itself as being a free event, accessible to all who want to share the enriching experience of multiculturalism. All you need to bring for a great day out is a happy heart and an open mind.