Festival expects largest crowd

During the last four years, Virginia Commonwealth University’s Intercultural Festival has grown into a larger-than-life spectacle. Attendees gather each spring from Richmond and beyond to enjoy the day’s excitement, rewarding the students who volunteer to organize the festival. This year, organizers are shooting for the biggest crowd to date-between 4,000 and 5,000 people-by adding a parade and offering more entertainment for the week leading up to the April 9 event.

The day’s colorful performances and friendly atmosphere have made the Intercultural Festival a fixture at VCU. While there were a handful of events in the past that built up to the festival, this year ICF Week will be packed with more activities than ever before.

Louise Kapelewski, marketing chair for ICF, said she hopes the new features increase cultural awareness and make the festival even more well-known.

“Instead of cramming everything into one day, students who can’t come on the weekend can do stuff throughout the week,” Kapelewski said.

Part of this new approach to the festival’s buildup involves bringing in notable guest speakers. Alisa Veldes-Rodriguez, a Latin American novelist, will share her perspective on Hispanic culture with students April 4 in the West Grace Theater. Later in the week, director Ross Kauffman will discuss his Academy Award-winning film “Born Into Brothels” following a screening in the University Student Commons Theater. The documentary follows children born to prostitutes in Calcutta through a unique point of view-with footage the children filmed using cameras provided to them.

But these rare opportunities, ICF organizers insist, are only some of the week’s highlights. Hot on the heels of the French Film Festival, which takes place March 31 to April 2, the Commons will be hosting acclaimed and diverse films including “The Constant Gardener” throughout ICF week. Volunteers will also be promoting the festival all week at tables in the Commons, so students can stop in for cultural ice cream or Henna tattoos between classes. To top it all off, ICF is holding its first-ever parade Saturday, April 8, to let organizations and performers interact with students before Sunday’s extravaganza.

Even with so many changes, festival organizers know they shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken; everyone can still enjoy the familiar aspects of the Intercultural Festival that have made it so popular. Along with the customary dazzling performances, attendees will once again be invited to pick up a “passport” and get it filled by visiting the student organization booths. Once filled, the passports are placed into a drawing for a grand prize loaded with gift certificates to restaurants and shops.

“The passport is a wonderful way for individuals to get glimpses of the entire festival,” said Shivani Shodhan, co-director of ICF. “Sometimes you go to a festival and have no idea where to start in order to get a complete experience.”

Shodhan summarizes the festival’s approach to learning about various cultures as “edutainment.” If someone presents information in a stimulating way by combining it with entertainment, Shodhan said, a message is more likely to get across.

“There is a lot of wealth in having diversity,” she said. “I don’t mean materialistic wealth, but there is a wealth in information, a wealth in perspective that adds to our everyday lives.”

What started as some students’ modest interest in multiculturalism has finally exploded into an entire community’s anticipation. The festival’s out-of-control growth has organizers overwhelmed with performers who want to join the show. Mark Henin, entertainment chair for ICF, said the most rewarding part of working on the event for two years has been watching interest in the festival skyrocket.

“At one point we were having trouble getting actual performers,” Henin said. “It got to the point where I didn’t even have to work very hard-people kept throwing themselves at the festival.”

The festival is becoming so huge that Kapelewski said ICF organizers are looking into expanding into Monroe Park in the years to come. For now, they are managing the high demand for multicultural activities by stretching events across a whole week. This way events like the traditional tea ceremony, which Kapelewski said requires a much larger space than they could make available at the festival itself, can help build up steam for the celebration on Sunday.

Now that the event has become such a success, the thrill helps draw organizers into volunteering their time year after year. Like many current head organizers, Grishma Bharucha helped out as a normal volunteer in the past. Since committing more of her time as ICF operations chair for this year’s festival, Bharucha said she’s been motivated to shed some of her quiet demeanor.

“I just noticed that the people involved were so enthusiastic and excited about what they were doing and really believed in what they were doing-celebrating culture and diversity-and it was mainly their enthusiasm that pulled me in,” Bharucha said.

Student organizations are also more eager to join the festival than ever before. This year groups such as the Forensic Science Student Club, Queer Action and Delta Phi Omega Sorority, which all lack multicultural roots by nature, will join the traditional groups in promoting diversity. Shodan emphasized that these organizations will incorporate multicultural themes and information at their booths like any other group.

“It’s not a SOVO fair,” Shodhan said. “We’re not out there to just recruit people.We recognize that each person has something different to offer and we don’t want to close our doors on them because they’re not necessarily multicultural.”

Henin also said preventing any groups from participating would go against the festival’s purpose. While some organizations might not be explicitly based on diversity, he said their perspective can still be valuable.

“They add their own flavor. They add their own knowledge and experience and that adds to the festival,” Henin said. “It makes it a whole umbrella where everyone can participate and not exclude anyone.”

After already having worked on two previous festivals, Shodhan said she’s proud of how far the Intercultural Festival has come. For her, the festival heightens VCU’s already visible diversity.

“We are one of the most diverse universities in the state of Virginia, and I think that through the intercultural festival, the university is better embracing that diversity and better interacting with the diversity that is already here.”