CULFEST'21

CULFEST is a cultural festival which consists a lot of activities that would help introduce various culture and lifestyle to the audience. When I heard of this event, I was very much intrigued to join the crew to not only broaden my knowledge regarding other cultures but also to help promote them. It also helps to foster social inclusion. Some people have stereotypes towards some culture and this event is a great opportunity to educate them about it. I believe that joining this event would benefit me in many ways especially in improving my graduate attributes. Hence why I decided to challenge myself to participate in the event as a committee member.

• Communication Skills

Being a committee means communication is very essential. The event consists of competitions that require us to communicate with participants to ensure they understand the guidelines of the competition. Moreover, there are also people outside of the organization that needs to be contacted for example professional juries to evaluate the photos and videos for the competition as well as panels for forums and sharing sessions. Apart from that, we also need to communicate a lot with our teammates in order to complete tasks before the given time. All the communicating had helped me a lot in enhancing my social skills.

• Thinking Skills

As a committee, there was a lot of thinking to be done especially when there are last-minute changes to be done or if there are any unexpected problems that occur. Because of that, we had to act fast, not wanting to make the audience wait. This required a lot of brainstorming among the team members like making the marking rubric for the competition evaluation. This was to make sure the criteria and marks are fair. Therefore, this has helped enhance my thinking skills in many ways.

• Leadership and Teamworking Skills

As I was the person in charge of the video competition, I was the leader of the activity. Because of that, I had to make sure to take into account everyone’s opinions before proceeding with the decision. This is to avoid any misunderstandings and any unnecessary problems occurring. Although organizing and distributing tasks may seem easy, I had to divide tasks with the fact that I should not burden my teammates too much in mind since every individual have their own activities they are responsible for. At times, it was easier to take matters into my own hands. There were a lot of thoughts and considerations to be done before actually completing a task. But ultimately, it was just a matter of great teamwork skills and the success of the event proved how our leadership and teamwork skills had improved greatly.

The culture festival is an event to promote knowledge revolving around various culture and traditions all around the world. Due to COVID-19, it was unfortunate to only conduct the event online. Nevertheless, it turned out to be successful. The event consists of many activities that involve a lot of parties and are open to the public. There was a photo competition with the theme ‘Capture the Footprint of Culture’ and a video competition themed ‘What is Your Cultural Uniqueness?’. Next, there was also a cooking show where cooking videos of recipes from different countries are uploaded to Culfest’s official Instagram TV (IGTV). Apart from that, there was also a cultural quiz where participants are allowed to walk through a virtual gallery using Artsteps before proceeding to answer questions related to the countries included in the gallery through Quizziz. There was also a forum titled ‘Student Life: Barriers to Cross-Cultural Communication Forum’. The next day, language classes were held which included languages like Tamil, Mandarin, French, German, Russian, Arab, Japanese and Korean. Each class limited to 40 participants were conducted in its own Google Meet with paid instructors from outside the university. Last but not least, there was a sharing session with the topic ‘Standing In The Eyes Of The World’ before the closing ceremony when winners of the competitions are also announced.

As a crew member, it was undeniably hard to go back and forth between studies and event management. However, it was a great opportunity and experience to be able to be part of the committee. I managed to obtain so much knowledge from this event alone aside from improving my graduate attributes. In fact, every crew was given the opportunity to join a language class for free. It was a wonderful experience to learn a foreign language. I picked Mandarin as I thought it would be helpful to communicate with Chinese citizens in Malaysia. Unfortunately, there were problems that arise the very last minute. In my case, the evaluating form for the video competition was very vague and confusing when we first designed it. There were no comments about it until the evaluation day. It was also a task I was not responsible for at the moment. However, as the person in charge of the activity, I had to act fast and edit the form to meet the requirements. The problem was definitely a challenge for me as I had to multitask, listening to online lectures and editing the form at the same time. I calmed myself down before thinking of a way to solve the matter since panicking would contribute to nothing. All in all, it was a great event. I was able to take advantage of some situations and turn it into lessons. Communication, teamwork, leadership, time management and thinking are all just small portions of the skills I gained but it was more than enough to provide a better sight for me.