FestPAC: Power of Cultural Festivals
You Can Travel Without Leaving Home
Benefit of Travel Without Leaving Home
It is often said that “travel is good for the soul.” Another quote by Emile Zola extols the benefits of travel: “Nothing develops intelligence like travel.” How fortunate to be able to experience different countries from across the Pacific right in my backyard of Honolulu for the Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture, affectionately called FestPAC. I got the kind of soul-enriching, heart-expanding, learning experience associated with travel to foreign countries. Bonus: It was free!
FestPAC or the Festival of Pacific Arts and Culture, is held every four years, hosted by one of the participating countries across Oceania. It started in Fiji when leaders met to discuss the erosion of traditional culture in the region, and the festival was proposed as a means to address this. This past festival in Honolulu was the 13th since the first one was held in Fiji in 1972. Hawaii was scheduled to host in 2020, and because of Covid, there was an eight year stretch between this one and the previous one hosted by Guam in 2016.
I was living in Guam at the time of the previous FestPAC, and a children’s musical play that I had written was selected to be a part of the festival in 2016. Back then, my…
