International Student Festival
Campus buzz
By: Kelly & Shaistah
Photos by: ISF Organizing Team
The International Student Festival started on 7th December 2009 with exhibitions which showcased the cultures of each international student’s countries. These exhibitions were placed right in the middle of South Agora to attract everyone walking through the entrance of the polytechnic. Music of different countries played loudly enough to incite curiosity RP students/facilitators to walk to South Agora.
The total number of cultural booths that were put on display for the exhibitions were 10, this included, Vietnam, India, Myanmar, Indonesia, china and Japan. Each cultural booth displayed food items and artifacts that belonged to its country. The memoir and pieces of cultural origin were used to beautify the booth. These booths which created the ambiance of the origin country aroused the nostalgic feeling for our fellow international students.
Each booth had its own specialty in attracting viewers. For example, the Malaysia booth gave free ‘teh tarik’, Myanmar booth incited curiosity with cultural instruments whilst the china booth inspired people to write their thoughts
in their traditional way of calligraphy. The impressive way of recreating the memory of each country turned many RP students and facilitators heads. Most of the students who stood around to tour the individual booths were very impressed on how ISF has gone into detail in portraying each country’s uniqueness and culture.
By the end of the first day of the exhibition, the organizer commented that, “We were able to raise awareness about international student festival to one third of RP population”.
On the second day (8th December 2009) of the exhibition, ISF had brought in Hip Hop IG to draw a huge crowd to the booths. Among this crowd was Mr Yeo Li Pheow, Principal of RP and Mr. Ganesh, Director of TRCC and other non-RP people who joined in the fun.
The performance only lured a small group of people in the beginning however as the performance started to heat up, more people who were on their way out of RP stopped to enjoy the performance with the rest of us.
Ragu, President of Hip Hop IG who was also the emcee for the performance spoke about the collaboration between ISF and Hip Hop IG and called upon the Organizer of ISF so that the audience would be able to get to know more about the purpose of this event.
The finale dance consisted of ISF models who did a catwalk dressed up in their traditional costumes and all the dancers of Hip Hop IG. The finale dance received a heartwarming applause from the many who had gathered around south agora.
There was a board put up to allow audience to write their comments about the exhibitions. Some of the testimonials that depicted the atmosphere of ISF were:
“Best Memory”
“Cool Experience”
“ISF Rocks”
“Once in a lifetime”
The final day, 10th December 2009, of the International student festival was the cultural performance that promised to etch the presence of the international students in the minds’of the local students in RP.
The ISF concert has to be one of the larger scale event ever to be conducted In The Republic Cultural Centre (TRCC). 200 performers, consisting of international and local students gathered to give the crowd a wonderful evening filled with laughter and entertainment.
Before the start of the concert, @loud had a short interview with the Principal to find out what he thought of the ISF.
Would you encourage ISF to be an annual event?
Mr Yeo: What happened in the last 2 days and about to happen tonight happened in the interest of the ISC students. Nothing can happen without the students’ interest. If they are interested and determined enough to make it an annual event, it is possible for this to happen again.
From the overwhelming crowd that was seated in TRCC, it is feasible to say that a lot of publicity has been put into the International student Festival.
Each culture had the opportunity to portray their cultural dances on stage by the means of dancing, singing and skills. Their performances were pleasant to the ears and visually entertaining. The high point of the concert was when the performers thrilled the crowd with their proficient skills of Wushu. The audience was very supportive every time each country students came onstage to perform. The crowd undoubtedly enjoyed themselves.
The concert came to an end with a nostalgic performance by the international and local students, called “TOGETHER” which was composed by the students themselves. This final performance received a standing ovation.
@loud interviewed Nguyen Mai Huong, Organiser of ISF event to find out what she thought of the entire event.
Why did you come up with the idea to create ISF?
I came up with the idea of ISF a year ago, built it up during Chinese New Year and presented it in front of ISC committee members, advisors 7 months ago. I acknowledged that unlike NTU, NUS, or other universities, RP have not had any cultural festivals. I was inspired by that to write a proposal called “International Student Festival”. A big thanks to Tiffany and Harris, my two assistant organizers, without them, ISF would not be a success.
What kind of response has your event gotten so far? Were you able to reach the expected number of people in RP?
I would like to divide into 2 sessions for this question: Cultural Exhibition and Cultural Concert. For the cultural exhibitions, we were able to attract 2/3 of the school population. As for the Cultural Concert, we nearly had a full house; the exact number was 700 audiences. It reached our expected number. The concert has received a lot of good and excellent feedbacks from all audiences. @
