Town Celebrates Cultural Diversity with Global Village Festival

The rainy weather on Saturday did not stop Amherst locals from flocking to the inaugural Global Village Festival, held at Amherst Regional Middle School.

To celebrate cultural diversity and promote inclusivity, the festival brought together a multitude of different cultures under one event. Highlights included food trucks with various cuisines, live performances of traditional music and dance, and local vendors selling diverse products. The event also featured resource tables dedicated to municipal departments and community organizations.

Phillip Avila, the assistant director for the town’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Department, one of the institutions responsible for organizing the event, shared the motivation behind the event.

“It's really meant to bring cultural diversity and multi-culture into the town celebration,” he said. While the town has held events for specific cultures in the past, Avila highlighted that this event aims to “bring everybody together under one celebration and have a great time.”

Robert Allingham, marketing and communications manager for the Amherst Downtown Business Improvement District, which helped sponsor the event, emphasized that although Amherst is a small town, it brings together a variety of cultures.

“Amherst is a fairly diverse place, with a lot of different families and people that have been here for a long, long time, and also people like me, that have only been here for a couple of years,” he said. “There’s a lot of different cultures that are represented in the Amherst area and the Pioneer Valley. So hopefully people can come to learn a little bit about other people's organizations and cultures, as well as seeing their own represented at the same time.”

Attendees enjoyed performances from local organizations, like the Chinese Association of Western Mass, the Duffy Academy of Irish Dance, and Capoeira Gunga do Vale. At the resources tables, a range of town departments were represented, from Amherst Recreation to the Department of Health. Community organizations, including  the Western Mass Animal Rights Advocates, SOS Amherst, and the Mead Art Museum, were also some of the groups showcasing their work.

At the Mead Art Museum booth, there were a variety of postcards featuring artwork from the Black Art Matters exhibition, all created by Amherst College students. The booth also invited visitors to participate in a “Representing” activity, focused on exploring diversity and the ways people represent themselves and others through art.

Pablo Moreira ’28 and Isabelle Sloan ’28, who staffed the Mead Art Museum booth, highlighted the relevance of the event for the town.

“I think that putting together an event of this scale, and bringing this many people together, is something that really sends a message about the commitment that Amherst, as a city, has to its population and its diverse people,” said Moreira.

“Especially in this time, I think it's just so important to understand that people are still welcome even when they may not feel that way,” added Sloan.

The Linguistic Heritage Celebration, an event that had been celebrated for the past three years, was integrated into the Global Village Festival, with the intent of honoring the great diversity of languages spoken in Amherst and the surrounding area — including Quechua, Arabic, Spanish, Chinese and many others.

At the Colombian table, visitors were encouraged to speak Spanish words in exchange for Colombian desserts. Mariana Pinto, the organizer of the Colombian table, felt that the event had an important social impact.

“I think that [the event] helps decrease the discrimination,” she said. “When you learn and you taste our food … you will increase your knowledge and open your eyes to other cultures.”

For Bethelehem Abiye ’28, the highlight of the event was its multilingual focus.

“There was a station where this lady would write your name in Arabic and that was really cool, just because I'm not super familiar with the language, but I've always wanted to learn,” she said.

Abiye also felt that town events are a unique way to bring students closer to the town community.

“Sometimes, when you’re going to the college, you aren’t super connected within the town itself,” she said. “It’s nice … to get off campus and see how much more there is that goes into the town and the community itself — [to] see people come together, have similarity with one another, and meet people yourself, it makes you feel more connected, and have roots here.”