2011-07-14
Celebrating Cultural Diversity In Glasgow Mela
Glasgow is a city renowned for its cultural and ethnic diversity, and there’s no more fitting celebration of its variety than the O2 Glasgow Mela, which is now a firm fixture of the city’s West End Festival.
Popular both for its vibrancy and free entry, the Glasgow Mela exploded into life as one of the many cultural celebrations launched in 1990 when Glasgow was bestowed the honour of European City of Culture. Now celebrating its 20th anniversary, the Mela is bigger than ever, with three stages of entertainment drawing crowds to the wide open spaces of Kelvingrove Park on Saturday 20 June for a packed day of music, dance and acrobatics on the main stages, as well as interactive arts and craft stalls and a funfair to entertain visitors of all ages.
The word ’mela'meets ’to meet'in Sanskrit, and is the perfect title for this coming-together of cultures. Renowned for showcasing everything from Bhangra to Bollywood, the Mela is a chance for Scottish residents and international visitors to experience firsthand authentic cultural celebrations of Asia and beyond, with confirmed acts for this year including the KAWA Circus of Rajasthan, Brazilian dancers, Japanese drummers and Punjabi and Bhamgra celebrities Jaz Dhami and JK.
The wide-reaching festivities are not confined to Kelvingrove Park either, with street theatre and other cultural exhibits expanding into Glasgow during the festival period. The eclectic atmosphere is taken even further with the other festivals taking place in Glasgow in June, including the ever-popular Glasgow Jazz Festival, where performers will be lending their live jazz talents to the Mela’s Commonwealth Stage to blur the boundaries further.
Visitors taking flights to Glasgow this summer could not ask for a more diverse array of festivities, with the West End Festival taking place throughout the city at locations such as the Botanic Gardens and University of Glasgow and off-shoots such as the North Glasgow International Festival, which is organised by the police and dedicated to asylum seekers.
The all-encompassing O2 Glasgow Mela is the most inclusive of them all, a fantastic melting pot of different cultural ideas and activities to appeal to attendees of widely different backgrounds and experiences. From dazzling performances to enjoying a curry in the park, the festival is a chance to find out about and interact with other cultures, as well as to let your hair down and enjoy some of the world’s most exciting rising stars at the free event.
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