University Park hosted its first ever Lunar New Year Culture Fest event at the University Park library on Saturday, Feb. 8. Designed to highlight the area’s diversity through Culture Fest, the event aims to underscore various aspects of different cultures and gives the community an opportunity to experience the traditions surrounding the Lunar New Year festival.
“People don’t realize that the Park Cities have so many residents from so many different cultural backgrounds,” event coordinator Esther Choi said. “Hosting events like the Lunar New Year are a great way to showcase that diversity.”
A key focus of Culture Fest is student involvement in its organization and execution. This gives students a chance to volunteer and learn about various cultural celebrations.
“The students are a big part of the culture fest, we’ve always been about having the high school students volunteer and get experience,” Choi said. “It’s really fun for them as well.”
The event featured speakers teaching about the history surrounding Lunar New Year as well as showcasing traditional cultural games. People who attended learned about customs and traditions through these games, which were led by community members.
“There will be a few presentations about traditions and the ways that Lunar New Year is traditionally celebrated. There will be Korean members of the community showing games and different things that they do to celebrate,” University Park library liaison Ashley Park said.
Though the library has done smaller-scale events, this marked one of the first large-scale events they’ve hosted incorporating different cultures.
“We’ve done Lunar New Year craft programs that are on a smaller scale. This is really exciting for us to be able to have an official Lunar New Year event that involves so many different things like food, family activities, and presentations,” library representative Zoe Williams said.
Beyond earning volunteer hours, Lunar New Year also provided an opportunity for high school students to expand their knowledge of the various cultures in their neighborhood. The newly formed Culture Club aims to recruit new members and encourage participation in events like these.
“This year we have formed an official student club. It’s called Culture Club, which mobilizes volunteers and gets people to join in on whatever event we have going on. These activities are run by the high school students,” Choi said.
The event encourages people to come and participate in the various activities that will be featured. This creates an interactive experience to learn about the different aspects of Lunar New Year celebrations.
“We’re going to have lantern making, calligraphy, and a couple of cultural games. We will also have a small presentation on the significance of Lunar New Year for different cultures,” said Williams.
Lunar New Years brings the community together with people of all different backgrounds to celebrate and learn about each other’s cultures. The event highlighted the importance of cultural diversity within our community.
“I really like that one of the great things about CultureFest is that it’s really a community, organized event. It’s all volunteer driven. It involves the kids, and it involves high school students,” says Choi.
