Arts festival expecting 50,000-plus visitors

Last year’s Flame Tree Festival attracted at least 50,000 people to the event, according to the Commonwealth Council for Arts and Culture, and it is hoping that the 27th edition of the annual festival will attract a much bigger turnout.

CCAC executive director Cecilia T. Celes said that an onsite survey was done two years ago to determine how many people attended the festival and “over 45,000 visited the Flame Tree Arts Fest then. Last year we did an overall estimate of 50,000 who visited the site.”

Celes said that each year, the Flame Tree Arts Festival attracts many people from around the world such as Germany, Australia, Russia and Switzerland.

“The people here may not be aware of this but it truly has attracted people from different parts of the world,” she said.

The Flame Tree Arts Festival is Micronesia’s largest annual arts and culture celebration, featuring traditional and contemporary visual, performing and culinary arts from the region and beyond.

According to Celes, it serves as an opportunity for people to feature their culture.

“We all have come to be a part of each other, we live together in harmony and therefore we have opened that opportunity to the many other different cultures to promote themselves and their cultures,” Celes said.

The Flame Tree Arts Festival, which for many years was hosted at the American Memorial Park, goes back this year to its birth place at the Civic Center, which was the first hosting site of the festival.

“And it was in the early ’90s when it moved down to the memorial park. Lately, there were some issues in the past that we faced, such as federal regulations, insurance policies that we needed to provide, and the fee to host the site that we had to pay and with the very little budget that we operate on, we couldn’t have hosted it there,” Celes said.

Last year, the event organizers were skeptical that the Civic Center could draw as much number of people “because of the limited parking space.”

“But we did the 26th annual here and people came,” said Celes.

The Department of Public Lands has authorized the Flame Tree Arts Festival to be hosted at the Civic Center for free.

“The understanding that we have is to make sure that we are also facilitating a safe program and a safe event. So in lieu of the insurance and federal regulations [required by the AMP] and all that, we have police officers on site and we have the fire department for emergency purposes and manpower to go around picking up trash so they don’t end up in the water,” Celes said.

The event, which used to take only two days, will take place for four days at the Civic Center.

“As I was brainstorming I realized that it takes us six months to prepare for a festival like this. I think it’s only common sense for us to extend it so that we can give our community a longer opportunity and chance to see everything. And so from 2006 to date, our festival has been for four days and it will continue to be for four days as long as I’m the director,” Celes said, laughing.

Celes said that even with the economic downturn, it’s really about culture and togetherness that will draw a huge crowd.

“I think that…deep in the hearts of everybody, culture is very important. When it comes to culture, everybody’s on the same page,” Celes said.

She said the event would also serve as a perfect opportunity for people to realize the importance of culture and the arts.

“I think that no matter where you take the flame tree [festival], people will come. You can take this Flame Tree Arts Fest and put it at the airport field and people will come. That’s how confident we are. We’re a very small community and culture is still very important for all of us, and because of that people from the outside are interested to learn more about us,” said Celes.