MARYVILLE, Mo. – Northwest Missouri State University will host its first Intercultural Festival, featuring an array of workshops, lectures, films and performances by nationally touring groups, Sept. 28 through Oct. 3.
“We are celebrating our cultural diversity at Northwest and want our faculty, staff and students, as well as our communities, to be more interculturally competent,” said Dr. Himadri Chakraborty, an associate professor of physics who chairs the Northwest Faculty Senate’s Intercultural Advocacy Committee. “Our cultural diversity is only going to increase in time and we hope this will drive our community to better understand other people’s cultures and to function more efficiently in a culturally diverse environment.”
The Intercultural Festival is an initiative of the Northwest Faculty Senate’s Intercultural Advocacy Committee, which is sponsoring the week-long festival in partnership with Northwest’s Student Senate and the offices of International Programs, Study Abroad and Multicultural Student Success. Additional support comes from the office of the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Chairs’ Council, the Encore performance series and Professor of Recreation Dr. Terry Long as well as grant-funding from Northwest’s Improvement of Teaching and Learning Committee, the Missouri Arts Council and the Missouri Humanities Council.
The festival will include an Intercultural Cuisine Tasting, Conversation and Fashion Show on Saturday, Oct. 3, in the Student Union Ballroom. During this event participants may sample foods from different cultures, talk with international students and attend a fashion show featuring wardrobes from these cultures. Food kiosks will include cuisine from China, India and Africa and dessert from Russia.
Sessions are 30 minutes with tasting at 1 and 2 p.m. and fashion shows at 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. Tickets, which are $10 per session and per country, may be purchased at the Student Services Center on the first floor of the Administration Building; 25 tickets are available per country per session, excluding the Russian dessert, which is included with each ticket purchase.
All other events are free and open to the public.
Other festival highlights include performances by nationally touring acts such as the Kansas City Celtic Pipes and Drums features Great Highland Bagpipes and Scottish Drums, which will perform a processional from Memorial Bell Tower, and classical Indian music masterfully performed by James Palmer and Shivalik Ghoshal with Northwest Professor of Music Dr. Rebecca Dunnell.
The festival concludes Saturday, Oct. 3, with performances by classical guitarist Beau Bledsoe and Company with special guest and violinist Christine Brebes and Grupo Atlántico, a St. Louis-based dance ensemble performing traditional dances of African, Native American and Spanish people with sounds of the Caribbean and coastal regions of Colombia, South America.
Grupo Atlantico’s finale to the Intercultural Festival also kicks off Northwest’s 2015-2016 Encore performance series and received direct support through grants awarded by the Missouri Arts Council and the Missouri Humanities Council.
Workshops and lectures presented during the festival will include “Classical and Folk Dances of India,” presented by Northwest Assistant Professor of Professional Education Dr. Pradnya Patet, which will introduce participants to various forms of classical and folk dances of India while recognizing the universal function of movement and music as forms of expression and an important part of cultural identity.
Concluding the workshop portion of the festival, Sein Lengeju, the founder and chief executive officer of the Keep Girls Safe, will present “International Women’s Rights: Who’s Going to Stop Me?”