Part II. Multicultural Events & Festivals on 2009

😉 Hope you guys have been participating some of awesome events posted last week.

But if you haven’t had enough time to enjoy them, don’t worry I will introduce you the list of multicultural events that will be held between October and December.

• 1~15 Oct [Art & About]

Art & About will bring together different art forms, spaces and artists in Sydney’

From painting to performance, laneways to banners, established to emerging artists, they will reflect Sydney’s identity and all its diversity.

http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/artandabout/

• 2~5 Oct Darling Harbour Fiesta

Fiesta is Australia’s largest Latin American festival featuring high-energy Latin American bands, salsa and tango experts and much more’

World salsa campions and other dancers from So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars will perform. Also, Latin food and fireworks will spice up Tumbalong Park throughout Fiesta.

http://www.sydneyfestivals.com.au/darling-harbour-fiesta.htm

• 9~11 Oct Sydney International Food Festival

It is a celebration of Australian food that will bring together Sydney’s biggest culinary stars as well as chefs from some of the best restaurants in the world’

Also restaurant dinners to markets, street festivals and open-air eating, the best regional produce and the finest fine dining will be presented.

http://www.siff.com.au/

• 10 Oct [Sydney 2009 World Masters Games]

The world’s largest multi-sport event, attracting up to 25,000 people from upwards of 100 countries’

The Games opens to people of all abilities and most ages, and promotes lifelong friendship regardless of their background or skill level.

http://www.2009worldmasters.com

• 17~30 Oct, 4~22 Nov [Multicultural Art Competition 2009-Australian Identity?!] at Customs House

Artworks that tell a story or encapsulates an impression of the City’s diversity and multiculturalism’

As a young and culturally diverse nation, with rich indigenous culture and heritage spanning thousands of years, the competition challenges artists and illustrators to express their own interpretation and view of Australia’s national identity.

http://cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Community/GrantsAndAwards/MulticulturalArtCompetition.asp

Eevery event has unique theme and value that nothing should be missed out.

Let us know your experience from these events 🙂

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Multicultural Events & Festivals on September

How are you doing everyone?

Me? well, I jsut have finished summarizing the list of all the multicultural events/festivals held in Sydney for the rest of this year.

I should say it was not an easy work to search, select, edit and organize in a format, but worth it!

Until now, I haven’t quite known there are such valuable and variety of events focused on Sydney’s multicultural aspects!

What the best point of all is …. most of them are free to enjoy!!!

In this post, I will only list for the September events that will arrive very soon 🙂

But unfortunately, there are some events held on a same day, so you might need to choose where to go, haha.

Have a look the list first and I am sure you will find some interests!

• 10 Sep [A National Scandal: Perspectives on Australian/Asian Intermarriages] at Customs House Library

The Chinese Heritage Association of Australia to celebrate History Week 2009’

Individuals from both the Chinese and Anglo-Saxon Aus communities, and Dr Kathie Blunt will discuss why intermarriage between Asians and Australians was a national scandal.

Special Broadcasting System or Slightly Boring Sketch of OZ ?

It has been really warm out here in Sydney that I can hear the Summer is coming without the Spring.

So, I might go out and appreciate the nature God given, rather than watching Aussie TV programs dragged in a freezing living-room.

But before that, let me introduce one of representative Australian TV channels which is very distinguishable from all the others.

You know that Australia has numerous broadcasting networks include famous ABC, Nine, Ten, Seven and SBS. They all have each distinct purpose and content to satisfy different needs of various groups in Australia.

Yet, I will only nominate SBS (Special Broadcasting System) for the most ‘appropriate’ Australia channel that represents its real multicultural society in particular.

Mardi Gras: Gay culture in Sydney ‘We all live under the sky’

Have you ever heard about Mardi Gras festival held every year in Sydney?

Well, even if you haven’t, you will probably know the most famous gay & lesbian festival in Sydney and that’s called ‘Mardi Gras’. Although the term ‘Mardi Gras’ refers to the season before Ash Wednesday, its Sydney festival is not held on Mardi Gras (Shrove Tuesday) or indeed, on a Tuesday at all.

On every February in Sydney, you can expect tens of thousands visitors and participations from the Sydney Opera House to Victoria Park.

This celebration began in the early 1980s after pro-gay rights protestors were arrested. The organisers of the festival had also been arrested, mainly due to conservative Christian groups have led anti-movement against Mardi Gras.

Despite how much the religious groups feel uncomfortable, the Sydney Mardi Gras has become the largest LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) event in the world. Not only LGBT people but also ‘straight’ unite together and pr0udly celebrate their identity during the festival season.

Have a look at a YouTube clip that summarizes the 2009 Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras.

The Code of Australian TV drama: Yeap, I am ‘Aussie’ drama.

Good afternoon, everyone. This is DJ again. I am here to talk about a very interesteing subject named  ‘the code of Australian TV drama’.

I generally have been thinking that Australian dramas are not quite ‘attractive’ as much as American ones. Maybe because I am being an international student in Sydney, the dramas are neither representative nor really understandable at least for me, (then Why Americans’?).

Let me have a look at some of Australian’s favorite dramas that hopefully represent Australian identities.

Nothing to Blame but Racism

Here I am to talk about the controversial issue ‘racism’ accused by religious and ethical groups.

This is the story of an Islam community I found necessary to think about.

-An Islamic community is accusing the New South Wales government that the community has been unfairly treated by the department for constructing an Islamic school. Click for details

According to the news article, a three-hectare site was bought from the New South Wales Education Department, but the department changed its mind three years later and invoked powers to announce it would buy the land back and halt construction of the Islamic school.

The principle of the proposed school, Mohamed El Dana says the ‘Islam’ community has been always treated by the govenment in a discriminatory way that she believes the Australian government hates Muslims. She thinks the excuses of the government are unreasonable and accuses their such racist decision.

Australia boasts or promotes itself to other nations as a very welcoming country that any nationality, culture or religion background are harmoniously living, and yet, when it comes to the matter of settling in Australia, the government takes a defensive gesture that their ‘original’ identity(?) should be remained.

Yeah of course, multicultural society is the one of Australia’s unavoidable identities, however, in fact, only 8% of the population is of Asian descent while over 90% is European descent. See here.

I think it’s the alluring image of Australia that the government is proposing to the Asian nations, to save their future economic. But once the wanted are accepted into the country, their whatever original cultural, religion identities will be considered as “others”.

I am not only saying that the government is not accepting different qualities of other nationalities as much as their proposal seems, but also the people who have a concept of other nationalities are the one not opening as well, to where they plan to abide ‘permanently’.

Like indian students who have been attacked and raised protests, even an Indian newspaper calls them “Ugly”.

I just wonder where’s the problem originated and how it can be overcome if it should be?

This is a post by dajoung.

Korean Community in Sydney

Korean people who have been living in Sydney has comparably short history. Since 1890s when Australian missioneris went working in Korea, such interaction between two countries had begun.

Short after the Korean War, some Australian families have adopted lost Korean orphans. By the 1980s, apparently 100 Korean people had dwelt in Sydney under the Skilled Migration Program. However the number of Korean residents in Sydney begun to boost itself by 1,000 times more than what it had been before the 1980s. According to the Sydney Korean Society, about 100,000 Korean residents are corrently residing in Sydney.

But, not only more Koreans are entered to this looking gorgeous city, also the number of other various passport holders are significantly increased to stay in.

Unfortunately however, there’s not always good news ahead when people with different cultural/ social background are put together in a place. As a result, several controversial Korean related issues have been breaking news in Australia as more so sensational in S. Korea.

For example,

• The incident happend last year in March that a brother of famous S.Korean actor Lee Dong-Gun, was killed by two Chinese gangsters just infront of the World Square in Sydney. According to the Daily Telegraph, Lee Joon-yub, 19 old Sydney university student, collapsed and died on the footpath outside World Square after he and a friend became embroiled in a brawl with two teenagers at Hungry Jacks.

This vedio captures the moment of Lee’s friend Song Jung-ho collaped in a Korean store after being stapped.

Korean students have chosen Australia as their educational stepping ground. They are the second largest population just behind that of London, more than 25,000 Korean university and English language students lived in Sydney.

Yet, Lee Dong-gun says

“We had a clean image of Australia but this has tarnished it, and people are worried about the security in the city centre where there are gangs.”

Vivian Park, as the vice president of the Sydney Korean Society  and also as the Commissioner of the Communication Relations Commission for a Multicultural NSW, believes that the significance of multiculturalism in Sydney has decreased.

Park comments in an interview,

“We nee to contribute to the process to reestablish multiculturalism as a central principle for co-existence in our society”

This is a post by dajoung.