March 15, 2024
Final preparation for Polyfest
Thousands of rangatahi around Tāmaki Makaurau will spend their weekend in final rehearsals for PolyFest.
The four day festival starting on Wednesays will showcase cultural groups from 69 Auckland secondary schools across the Māori, Cook Island, Niue, Tonga, and Samoa stages.
Dean Wilson, who’s been involved with PolyFest for over 20 years, says there’s also the non-competition diversity stage, which has grown in importance to refelct the changing nature of the super city over the past half century.
“Some of those smaller Pacific islands will be on that stage but also a lot of the Asians, the Indian groups, the Chinese, the Korean, we’ve got a Tibetan group, Mongolia. So if people want to see a range of diverse cultural performances that is certainly the stage to check out and that runs on the Wednesday and Thursday next week,” he says.