On January 20, 1997, at Seattle Center, Festál celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day in its inaugural event. Festál is a series of diverse community-based festivals that promote ethnic and cultural diversity through performing arts, programs, and activities.
During its first year, 11 different festivals took place under the Festál umbrella. A roster of the original observances included (in order of appearance during the year):
- Martin Luther King Jr. Day
- Festival Sundiata (African American Cultural Association)
- Irish Week Festival
- Seattle Cherry Blossom and Japanese Cultural Festival
- Northwest Folklife Festival
- Pagdiriwang '97 (Philippine festival)
- Chinese Arts and Culture
- Tibet Fest '97
- Fiesta Patrias (celebrates the Latino community)
- Festa Italiana
- Hmong New Year Celebration
The advent of Festál brought community-led heritage groups together in a new way to share resources, plan, and engage public audiences in a common public space at Seattle Center’s Armory Building. Since it started, Festál has grown to encompass 23 different cultural festivals (as of 2016), all provided at no cost to the public.
Festál began two years before its first official event, with the idea originating with Virginia Anderson (b. 1947), Director of Seattle Center in 1995, as "the person who made it happen" (Fred Poyner IV Interview with Steve Sneed).
Coming Together for the Common Good
In 1995, Seattle Center was the focus of a city-led effort to redevelop the area as a revitalized economic driver for the city. A first priority was given to improving program planning and contract negotiations that involved events and programs seen as major public draws, such as the Seattle SuperSonics at Key Arena, Bite of Seattle, the Armory Theater, and Bumbershoot. Yet there was also a perceived need to expand upon public programs at Seattle Center that were free for audiences to attend. The idea was to create economic expansion by bringing more visitors to Seattle Center while also making it more economical for the festivals to participate.
Already at this time there were seven festivals that were independently organized, some with a cultural focus, others more commercially driven, that used Center House inside the Armory Building as a venue. At the city level festivals up to this point had received mixed reviews: While each one offered a unique experience that promoted cultural diversity, the planning and implementation was at times "disorganized" and involved "a lot of politics" (Fred Poyner IV Interview with Andy Frankel). The timing was right for a new model to help the festivals grow and move forward.
The expansion and renovation planned for Center House in 1995 presented an opportunity to redefine the festivals under one umbrella organization. A key element of the renovation was to re-envision public programming for the modernized Center House, with the festivals a ready-made group that could offer a diverse set of activities ranging from ethnic foods, dance, music, and art, at no cost for audience. By joining together, the disparate groups had the advantage of gaining a united effort on the political front, as well as financial benefits such as shared publicity costs, negotiated contracts for equipment rentals, and city labor provided at festival events.
With an organization of these groups in mind, Virginia Anderson led a coalition of city and festival leaders in a series of meetings and discussions in 1995 and 1996 that included Dennis Caldirola (b. 1948) with Festa Italiana and Andy Frankel (b. 1961), the newly hired Manager of Cultural Programs. The office of Mayor Norm Rice (b. 1943) also supported efforts early on to form a new vision for the festivals at Seattle Center, with the creation of Frankel's position one of the immediately tangible results of this commitment from city government.
However, as the meetings progressed, the assembled group members expressed concerns that a unification of the festivals was too difficult to do, with a primary concern voiced by more than one about the loss of individual festival identity once part of a larger group. The advantages of a united effort to present the festivals as a series of public programs eventually prevailed. Large corporate sponsors, such as AT&T and KOMO TV4, could now be secured in support of the series and its new collaborative identity. The renovated Center House had greater appeal over the aging Flag Pavilion on the Seattle Center grounds, which up to this point had hosted many of the individual cultural festivals in an older, smaller space.
The new group was also aided by adhering to several unifying conditions mutually agreed to by the members and endorsed as a way forward. In keeping with the identity of the Center House as a public space, the festivals remained free for the public to attend throughout the year of the series. New groups that wished to join Festál would have to undergo a vetting process and an incubation period of up to two years, to assess if they were a good fit for the series and its venue. A willingness to share resources among the members was a necessity and also key to continued support from the mayor’s office. Since Rice's initial support, every mayor of Seattle up to and including Ed Murray (b. 1955) has supported Festál.
Since its first year of operations, Festál has demonstrated repeat success with its financial model for public programs. In 1997, the Adopted Budget for the City of Seattle allocated $2,136,616 towards "Administration/Regional Programming" (City of Seattle 1997 Adopted Budget and 1998 Endorsed Budget, 367). By comparison, in 2015 the City’s "Festival Budget Control" or FBC level, allocated $1,342,795 in support of providing "a place for the community to hold major festival celebrations" (City of Seattle 2016 Proposed Budget, 120). The figures underscore the city’s commitment to cultural diversity through public programs such as those being offered through the Festál series.
The successive growth of the organization over the past 19 years in adding new Festál members both underlies and is a testimony to its success as a public program involving the communities and municipal government of Seattle. In 2016, the addition of Diwali: Lights of India (November 6) brought the total to 23 for the year, the greatest number in the history of the series.
