Pasifika organisers start working on bigger, longer event

Rashaan Puletiuatoa, 5, of Grey Lynn, is the proud owner of a Cook Islands ukelele, bought at the festival. Picture / Martin Sykes

Organisers of Auckland's Pasifika festival - revved up by a crowd record for the 13-year-old event - want to turn it into a two-week extravaganza of Pacific talent.

Near-exhaustion at the close of Saturday's bumper festival did not deter Auckland City Council's Pasifika project manager, Mere Lomaloma Elliott, from outlining the pan-Pacific community's hopes for an extended series of events from 2008.

Fiji-born Ms Elliott said her advisory board had already won approval in principle from organisers of the Auckland Secondary Schools Maori and Pacific Islands Cultural Festival, which opens on Thursday for its 30th year, for that event to kick off future celebrations.

Youngsters who now spent several weeks rehearsing for that two-day event could then have a platform to perform to an even wider audience at the Pasifika finale a fortnight later.

She said she would also propose to Waitakere City Council that it link its Pasifika Living Arts Festival, usually held between April and May, into a regional effort to blossom into a major tourism showcase as well as a cultural staple for local people.

She was worried about a lack of co-ordination among the cultural and entertainment events swamping the region at this time of year, causing some overlap and competition for scarce resources such as suitable sound equipment.

A rock and hip-hop music festival run on the same day as Pasifika by The Edge radio station at Ericsson Stadium, the two-week Auckland Festival AK05 and the Womad world music festival in New Plymouth led to a bidding war which boosted equipment hire rates.

This put considerable strain on programme schedules at the five Pasifika stages, leading to delays in which scores of Fijians and others were disappointed to miss star overseas performers Black Rose after a communication mix-up over where the group was to play.

It eventually took to the Radio 531 PI cultural stage almost an hour after the festival's notified wind-up time of 6pm, raising fears among some organisers they could be accused of breaching a noise limit enforced amid controversy against the Western Springs speedway.

An even later surprise encore on the same stage by legendary Los Angeles-based Pacific balladeer George Veikoso, better known as Fiji, pushed the close of the festival to 7.30pm.

But 531 PI station manager Sefita Hao'uli had few regrets, suggesting Western Springs neighbours would agree the "revs" produced by the Fijian songbirds were sweeter by far than the relentless roar of speedway cars.

Mrs Elliott said a regionally based cultural package of festivals would likely extend her event's narrow funding base, which includes a grant of $132,000 from the Auckland City Council, compared with about $1.5 million the council gave the inaugural arts festival AK03.

She had less than one-third that amount to run Pasifika, after raising just over $100,000 from stall-holders and about $200,000 from sponsors, and relying on about 200 voluntary workers.

Although $1 programmes had provided revenue this year and she was keen to explore other money-spinning opportunities, she could not envisage Pasifika as anything other than a free event.

Merea Pathak, an organiser of a cultural "village" run at Pasifika by the Kiribati community, said the festival badly needed more funding from the council or elsewhere to bring more artists and crafts to New Zealand from far-flung Pacific nations.