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Pako Festa

One Day, One Street, 45 Ethnic Communities

Friday, 02 February 2018

Pako Festa is Victoria’s biggest free celebration of cultural diversity. It is an award-winning, annual community street festival. Managed by Diversitat and held on the last Saturday of February (24th in 2018) in Pakington Street, Geelong West. It includes an amazing street parade featuring around ninety floats and hundreds of performers representing forty-five affiliated ethnic communities and around sixty other community groups and organisations.

From 9am, people arrive to browse through the wide range of stalls, selling everything from ethnic fashion to fairy wings. Brilliant buskers and a string of roving street performers will keep you entertained.

There is also a local makers and growers section and stalls with information to help you live more sustainably.

At 11am the Pako Festa Parade commences, with a colourful stream of cultural and community floats, local groups, entertainers and brass bands. The parade starts at Waratah Street and travels south along Pakington St. It is an incredible display of cultural diversity, colorfulness, and creativity.

In the afternoon, the street will be pulsating to the beat of back-to-back performances across a number of world music stages. Hundreds of performers from different multicultural backgrounds will present traditional and modern music, dance and song.

From the international kitchen, Pako Festa is pleased to present fresh and fabulous cuisine from local cultural communities including Greek souvlaki, Russian pancakes, Maori Hangi, Filipino skewers, and traditional Macedonian pastries. Local popular Pako food traders will also be open. 

Festival Tips

  • For information on how to get to Pako by public transport, where to park your car and a map of the precinct click here.
  • How To Dress? It might be hot, it might not! Remember a hat, sunscreen, water and don’t forget comfy shoes!
  • Respect the environment: Pako Fest is committed to minimising our impact on the environment – please help us by doing the same. Please give thought to packaging and while you are here, please dispose of your rubbish in one of the many bins or recycling points dotted around Pakington Street.
    Pako Festa is a Smoke Free Zone.
  • Water: Keep hydrated with Barwon Water’s Drinking Fountain at West Park. Bottled water will also be readily available from chill-out zones and many traders and food/ beverage stalls in the precinct.

The 2018 Diversitat Pako Festa is delivered by Diversitat and is supported by The Victorian State Government, Victorian Multicultural Commission and the City of Greater Geelong. In addition it could not be delivered without the support of many other local and non-local organisations and businesses.

Pako Festa Program is available here.

Images courtesy of: https://www.pakofesta.com.au/

Header image: by Phil Hines