Culture Mix 2024 serves up a parade of flavours again, but with some new stuff too

The program for Culture Mix, Wollongong’s celebration of diversity, has dropped, quite literally offering a feast for the senses.

After the success of last year’s inaugural event, which attracted an estimated 12,000 people over the course of the day, organisers have upped the ante this year.

In consultation with Wollongong Council’s Multicultural Advisory Committee and a range of local community organisations and individuals, the result is billed as a “hive of food, music, dance and art for the entire community to celebrate and enjoy” on Saturday, 19 October, from 11:30 am to 8 pm.

“The runaway success of last year’s event was largely due to the community buy-in, and particularly a lot of word-of-mouth among all the different cultural communities involved,” Wollongong City Council events specialist Belinda Morris says. “We’re hoping to build on that this year.”

Among a few new elements will be the dedicated “Culture Kids” area, a drop-in zone stationed at Crown Street Mall aimed at younger children. It will be populated with installations geared towards the littlies, as well as interactive activities including finger and hand puppet play, the chance to create musical instruments, seed games run by the Wollongong Botanical Gardens crew and language games by community language schools.

One of the highlights of the event will be the first culture mix street parade, led by the Balinese-Indonesian community of Wollongong.

“With one of council’s development grants, they’re creating an Ogah-Ogah monster – a giant paper-mache sculpture – to lead the parade, as well as a Gamelan (multi-timbre ensemble),” Belinda says.

“It will be a parade for everybody, and we’re encouraging people to come in their traditional clothing or bring an instrument – or even create one on the day – and join in behind the Ogah-Ogah as it parades from Crown Street Mall to the lower end.”

The Global Kitchen – a big hit at last year’s event – returns with a twist. The format will be more centred around “cultural immersion” with four different showcases – Latin American, Karenni, Persian and Vietnamese.

Visitors will have plenty of opportunities to stop by and taste a diverse variety of food, watch demonstrations throughout the day and get involved in traditional dance and music.

There’s also some expansion on last year’s Food Fair, which proved so popular that many vendors sold out well before 5 pm.

“We’ve increased the number of food stalls and added an additional long table down the centre, where people can bring their purchased food and sit with people from all different backgrounds,” Belinda says. “It becomes a bit of a cross-cultural meeting place.”

The main “zones” will include and be surrounded by fun activities, one of the highlights being the Karaoke World Cup.

“Anyone can take part, but lyrics of a different language must be included in your performance. That’s just one example of some of the fun activities we have in store – there’s so much amazing programming this year,” Belinda says.

“Folks should also not miss the activations at Wollongong Library and Wollongong Art Gallery.”

Belinda says the festival’s success stems from a robust consultation process that helps deliver on its purpose.

“We had overwhelmingly positive feedback last year, and that comes out of the fact we have an advisory group drawn from the community to do co-programming,” she says.

“People of any persuasion can apply for our development grants and use them to expand on what they do. Opportunity is at the heart of this event.

“A lot of the major works we’re doing are cross-cultural as well, so visitors will see a real mash-up of cultures coming together.”

See the program here.