Unity Fest 2006: Arts and Culture Celebrated
at CSUDH

Unity Fest 2006 will celebrate the rich cultural, ethnic, religious, and international diversity that exists on the CSU Dominguez Hills campus and its surrounding community with a two-day arts and culture festival open to everyone from noon to 6 p.m. on Thursday, April 20 and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 22 on the California State University, Dominguez Hills campus.

The multicultural celebration is to bring people together in a spirit of community. Each year the festival features live performances by dancers, musicians, story tellers, and many other artists, as well as carnival games, vendors with wares from many cultures, community organizations and services, an array of international foods, and the popular children’s arts and crafts village, which provides art projects, story telling, face painting, cartoons, and train rides.

Among the entertainers will be the performers from the Mariachi Academy of Carson, the reggae band Tomorrow’s Bad Seeds, traditional American Indian dancers, the female hip-hop performers Medusa, Polynesian dancers, the calipson band Dano’s Island Sound, the Latino rock band Quetzal, and the Latino spoken-word band Domingo Siete.

The event is sponsored by the Multicultural Center (MCC), the Office of Student Life, Toro Productions, Associated Students, Inc., Alumni Relations, University Outreach and Information Services, and the Institute for the Study of Cultural Diversity and Internationalization. Unity Fest is a program of the Division of Student Affairs.

There will also be information on the university, its programs and services on campus and in the community, online and in-class educational opportunities, and student housing.

Hundreds of students from dozens of middle and elementary schools as far away as Pasadena and Alta Dena have been invited to the festival. They will be treated to special performances and workshops by the University’s Teatro Dominguez theatre group and the University’s Dance Department, a tour of the campus, and a Native American blessing.

"It's our effort to establish a partnership with local schools to get students thinking about college at an early age, in hopes that they will consider Dominguez Hills as an option," says Lui Amador, coordinator, MCC.

CSU Dominguez Hills, which is situated in one of the most diverse areas in the United States, is uniquely qualified to offer such a festival. It has been ranked as the second most diverse university in the West and one of the most diverse in the United States. That diversity includes ethnically, culturally, socio-economically, educationally, and age range. The campus includes the Multicultural Center, the Center for Cultural Diversity and Internationalization, a Women’s Center, Women’s Studies, Asian Pacific Studies, Africana Studies, Chicana/Chicano Studies, the California African American Political and Economic Institute, Espiritu de Nuestro Futuro, the secretariat of the Pacific Coast Council on Latin American Studies, a special-education center, and many others.

Admission is free to all on both days, and parking is free on Saturday. On Thursday, on-campus parking is $3. Parking permits are available from the yellow dispensing machines at the perimeters of parking lots.

The event will be held in the University Sculpture Garden, which is accessible from the Tamcliff Street-Toro Center Drive entrance from East Victoria Street. CSUDH is at 1000 East Victoria Street, off Avalon Boulevard between the 91 and 405 freeways.

- Russell Hudson

Photos above: Hollywood Klezmer entertains the Unity Fest audience with a blend of Yiddish folk, jazz and classical music.

Teatro Dominguez performs "Floating Voices," written by Caitlin Masters (Class of ’05, B.A., English/Theatre Arts), and Angi Reynolds, senior, music, in tribute to the victims and survivors of the Southeast Asian tsunami of 2004.