Festival to celebrate diverse cultures

Korean Meehee Lee takes a closer look at a passionfruit for the first time at the Newcomer's Network meeting at Multicultural Tauranga in the Historic Village. Photo / Novak

This weekend the Historic Village will come alive with a festival of cultures, colours and culinary treats from around the world.

The annual Multicultural Festival will be held on Saturday in the village to mark International Race Relations Day.

It will be the 16th year the annual festival, which draws crowds from Tauranga and surrounding towns, has been running.

The day will include performances from nations including Nepal, Poland, Tonga, Kiribati, South Africa, Israel, and ethnic food, curio stalls and workshops.

Throughout the day, nations will also parade through the village in their national dress.

The Tauranga Regional Multicultural Council president Barry Reid said the day would include the regular mix of activities the festival usually had but with a feature band, Sabor, for the end of the day.

"We have been planning for the last six months and we are really excited about what is going to happen on the day.

"There is a quite a different array of things for this year, existing acts and new ones for this year," he said.

The day was used as a way to promote multiculturalism in Tauranga, share and develop friendships, gathering support for new and existing communities, protecting the democratic right of people, he said.

Each festival attracted more than 5000 people and this year was expected to be the same.