Kuching Festival Street Parade 2008

The street parade is a parade of cultures with lavish display of multicultural costumes,music and dance to crown the celebrating of Kuching 20th annvesery as a City.Both council the organiser,the council of the city of Kuching South and Kuching City North hall.

The theme for this year is "DOWN THE MEMORY LANE". The wild Cat....
Costume display...
The crowds and Thanks to the RELA for the hard works.
Cat woman Welcome to Kuching City.
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qouted from the borneo post::Letter to the editor.

City parade should have been better but …
By Stephen Thomas, KUCHING

AS a Westerner living in Kuching for the last eight years I make it a point of supporting the annual Kuching City Parade.

This year’s parade coincided with the celebrations for the City Day Remembrance Ceremony and therefore I had expected a special effort from the organisers to make it more special than normal. However, that was not the case.

This year’s parade was definitely less spectacular that last year’s with less corporate participants and no floats of any kind. Although I congratulate this year’s participants for their excellent efforts and enthusiasm, it did not make up for the lack of a spectacle and most importantly the total lack of professional organisation.

Surely more should have been done to make this year’s parade a very special one considering that it was linked with the 20th anniversary of Kuching becoming a city!

I am sure that the participants were very demoralised by the long time that they had to wait along the Main Bazaar before moving on to the main show at the Padang Merdeka.

There was a total lack of organisation in the timing of the parade.

I have attended many Citrawarna parades in Kuala Lumpur and as with this city parade in Kuching, the aim is for each group participating to give a short performance in front of VIPs at the end of the parade route.

The Citrawarna parade stops moving whilst the group at the front does its performance in front of the VIPs and whilst it is stopped, the remaining parade groups give their performance to the crowd lining the route…just as was done very successfully with the Kuching City Parade last year.

In doing this, the spectators along the route get a chance to see the performances of each group and the groups themselves get more practice and are motivated before their final performance in front of the VIPs.

The organisers of the Citrawarna Parade and those who organised last year’s Kuching Parade managed to keep the parade moving with no long waits which was not the case this year…so what went wrong this year?

If I were a participant this year I would be very demoralised by the waiting and therefore reluctant to participate in the future.

This year’s organisers must review their procedures and improve for next year. They must look at ‘the big picture’ of the timing of the whole parade from start to finish and not just concentrate on things looking good in front of the VIPs at the very end of the route.

I hope the relevant groups and organisers will view my suggestions constructively.