Transcript
SY LAGA'AIA - Back in 2011, there was an initiative that the board of education and some of the local youth leaders got involved with in how to increase the attendance of global Indigenous Maori and Pacific Island students into high schools. They started to work together and putting together this festival type idea with workshops leading up to it. So in 2014, they saw the increase of attendance from the students, hence the reason why they launched in 2014 a brand called PacFest, which stood for Pacific Australian Cultural Festival, but then in 2015 the brand got hijacked by another group. Basically copied the same content, took the same concept of it and they launched last year. So it caused a lot of confusion between the students having two festival brands identical to each other, launched at the same state. The whole reason for the Polyfest Australia brand was to unite the two brands together.
SELA JANE AHOLELEI - Do you plan to run Polyfest Australia the same way ASB Polyfest in New Zealand is run?
SL - The way we looked at it, we had to be very realistic about it. Polyfest Australia is basically Polyfest when it first started in New Zealand. So we have one stage, but we have four categories that are competing. We have the Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands and New Zealand Maori, which is the stronger cultures in schools here, in Sydney out in the western areas. And then we have a non-competing category, which is called indigenous. So the indigenous one is the aborigine groups and any of the cultures outside of the four competing ones.
SJA - Are we looking at Polyfest Australia being a one day event?
SL - We're looking at a two day event, but then it also depends on how many schools are registered at this stage. We're at like 75% capacity for a one day event and so it looks like it may go into a two day event.
SJA - You recently held an information day, did that help establish Polyfest Australia as the main brand, that there won't be a PacFest anymore?
SL - Now the good thing about it is that those that know about Polyfest especially those that are from New Zealand have migrated over to Sydney have now put up their hands and want to get involved because they were performers in high school, so it was well received here with it and then I think you still get that kind of like those that are thinking about, 'this is Australia and Polyfest is a New Zealand thing'. So we wanted to make sure that the students are well aware of what the actual brand is all about. Why we are actually launching it here in a time where there's a lot of confusion. Now a lot of people ask why isn't there a specific category for the aborigine kids here? And I've been consulting back and forth with our advisors in that area. It's just that the kids here are very shy. They're not like the Pacific Islander kids. We love to perform. We love to showcase our culture. So that is part of the reason why we created the indigenous category so that the students understand that, yes we still have room for our aborigine kids and also all the multicultural students that are attending school right now.
SJA - What other differences can we expect with Polyfest Australia to the one here in New Zealand?
SL - It's a little different. Having it indoors because the weather here in Sydney is unpredictable as well, so we just wanted to make sure that the kids were given that platform. That they had proper staging, proper production, the lighting and everything. That's how we do the festivals here.
