Residents of the Harbour City will have the opportunity to celebrate their differences an upcoming festival dedicated to cultural diversity.
Nanaimo’s annual Multicultural Festival is set to take place next Saturday (June 14) in the Old City Quarter.
The festival will feature live entertainment, a kids zone, an international food fair and approximately 40 vendors.
Festival organizer Kim Smythe said that the festival has grown since it began five years ago.
“We try to add a few improvements every year,” Smythe said. “We’ve expanded the festival considerably since we started to produce it. First of all we added a second stage, we added a food fair that is ethnically oriented.”
The festival will have two stages of live entertainment, which includes performances from the Chinese lion dance and parade, drums and pipers of the Pacific Gael and the Genya Bomfield Mediterranean Dancers.
“We’ve been very focused on the entertainment that we provide and that it does reflect the international cultures that come to live in Nanaimo and Canada,” said Smythe.
The Multicultural Festival has become more “thematically focused” since it began five years ago, he said.
“We have really tried to maintain that purity,” Smythe said. “That has really paid off. People come expecting to see ethnic and international things and that is exactly what they get.”
The Multicultural Festival will run from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. For more info, please visit www.dnbia.ca/events/multicultural-festival-5/.
arts@nanaimobulletin.com