Page 497 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 22 March 2023
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National Multicultural Festival—2023
Ministerial statement
MS CHEYNE (Ginninderra-Assistant Minister for Economic Development, Minister for the Arts, Minister for Business and Better Regulation, Minister for Human Rights and Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (10.04): I am delighted to rise today to share my appreciation, and that of our community, for all those involved in helping to bring the 2023 National Multicultural Festival to life.
This year’s extravaganza was the 25th milestone anniversary of one of the most loved events on the capital’s annual cultural and events calendar. The festival, like many events around the world, took a three-year hiatus due to the global pandemic, but it made a huge comeback in 2023, with a record number of attendees. The collective dedication and efforts of many hundreds of volunteers, vendors, stallholders, coordinators, performers, contractors and staff resulted in this year’s festival being hailed as the best ever in the history of the event—fitting for the 25th milestone anniversary.
During the festival weekend in February, hundreds of thousands of people flocked to the city centre across the Friday, Saturday and Sunday to see a jam-packed program of local, national and international performing artists—including dancers, singers, entertainers, bands and other culturally diverse creative contributions. Fuelled by delicious food and drinks from stalls across the event site, attendees enjoyed talent and performances from around the globe, with over 2,500 performers participating.
To bring this wonderful entertainment program to fruition required the work of many months of careful consideration, rehearsals, costume try-ons and passionate dedication from our communities to share their cultures and traditions with others. Many of the 260-plus food, drink and information stalls featuring cultures and countries from around the globe saw high volumes of trade in excess of expectations, with some selling out before the festival drew to a close. Glebe Park was added to the festival’s footprint in 2023, with festival attendees exploring the site and enjoying stalls and activities in the shade throughout the weekend.
While words can describe the joy and excitement many felt during the festival weekend, it is the post-festival figures, Mr Acting Speaker, which truly demonstrate the success of this year’s event. Let us begin with the biggest success of all—attendance. More than 350,000 people flocked to the 2023 National Multicultural Festival over three days, smashing the previous record. Almost one out of two Canberra households attended the festival at least once over the weekend. The time attendees spent at the event also increased significantly to 102 minutes per attendee, 30 minutes longer than they did in 2020. Collectively, that is a total of 595,000 hours spent at the festival in 2023, up from 207,000 hours in 2020, when attendee numbers reached 214,000.
For members’ benefit, and as a courtesy, I just received this morning some further data. This is not in the statement circulated, but I do not think it would be controversial. It certainly paints a wonderful picture, as well, in that we have now received early findings that show that 17,951 visitors to the ACT travelled specifically because of the event that weekend or extended their stay in the ACT in order to attend
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