On Saturday the 6th Feb, we ran the “Welcome to Our World” festival on Avenue Campus. With 6 zones and almost 40 different activities for the audience to participate in, the festival involved more than 50 contributors, 20 student helpers and attracted in excess of 300 attendees!
Throughout the course of the day, festival goers enjoyed a mix of storytelling performances, dance workshops, language tasters and international craft activities. The Confucius Institute contributed a great deal to the day, supplying Calligraphy and Beijing Opera Mask activities as well as a very popular Chinese Tea Ceremony session later on in the day. Various SUSU student societies also gave festival guests many opportunities to engage in intercultural exchange, with the Japanese Society providing a very popular Origami workshop, Mexican Society entertaining everyone with their traditional Mexican games, Quiz Society setting challenges with their International Quiz, stimulating and informative sessions from AIESEC and Debating Society and wonderful performances from Salsa Society, Capoeira Society and SUSingers.
The festival was also enriched by the contributions of local Southampton individuals and groups who also provided talks, performances, workshops and, certainly in the case of Bat2k, some brilliant noise! One of the aims of the Festival was to strengthen Southampton’s intercultural ties not only throughout the university but also in the wider community, so to have such valuable contributions from local people, as well as many members of the local community attending the event, meant a great deal to the Festival Team and facilitated intercultural exchange throughout the city.
On our return to the office today, the Festival Team have been looking through the feedback forms completed by those who attended the festival. Amongst the comments we received were ‘A great day- went in a flash!’, ‘A great event- please repeat!’ and ‘Excellent! Please continue to hold similar events!’. In addition to the various positive comments we received in person on the day, we’ve also received many emails from university staff commenting on the success of the festival and received some lovely coverage in the Southern Daily Echo.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who participated in WOW, the volunteers, the contributors and all those who attended. It really was a great day of making connections across cultures.
Do make sure to have a look at our Facebook Page in the coming days to see more festival photos, entries to the postcard competition, contributions to the recipe swap and more!
