“I love Ridgefield,” a passerby called out on Saturday, Sept. 5, as downtown Ridgefield was filled with the colors and flags of nations from around the world, capturing the spirit of the city’s ninth annual Multicultural Festival.
For Megan Dudley, president of the Ridgefield Multicultural Initiative, the festival is about giving residents a place to celebrate who they are while creating opportunities for others to learn.
“Today is our ninth multicultural festival and we have a theme of history to go along with our pop-up museum, which is the last day for the museum,” Dudley said.
The festival brought music, vendors, performances and other forms of cultural expression to downtown Ridgefield. Dudley said the event was created to provide a space where people could express their cultures without worrying about being ostracized.
“That’s what this whole day is, so music and vendors and just cultural expression in lots of different forms,” she said.
Among the performances was mariachi music, Vancouver Ballet Folklorico, and others scheduled to perform throughout the day. Dudley noted that some of the dancers in the Vancouver Ballet Folklorico are from Ridgefield, giving local youth an opportunity to showcase their talents in their own community.
“So it’s nice to see the kids being able to show their talent on the stage in Ridgefield,” she said.
The Ridgefield Multicultural Initiative formed as a nonprofit in 2022 after the festival had already become a community tradition. The city initially began the event in 2018 as a First Saturday event, but organizers eventually saw an opportunity to create a nonprofit that could take on more responsibility for the festival and develop additional events promoting a welcoming environment.
“We wanted to do events that would promote a welcoming environment for all peoples,” Dudley said.
That emphasis on learning and understanding also extends to Ridgefield High School, where students have developed their own Multicultural Night through the National Honor Society.
August Hynning, a Ridgefield High School senior and member of the committee organizing the event, said the goal is to bring people together through food, activities, music and displays about different cultures.
“We’re not the same, we’re all different people and everybody has different backgrounds and different histories, and it’s important to learn about diversity because you’re going to see it everywhere, so you might as well embrace it,” Hynning said.
Hynning said learning about other cultures can offer a window into family histories, traditions and perspectives that people may not otherwise encounter.
“I love hearing different folklore, and like just learning about other people and it allows you to really see other perspectives, and it’s just really cool,” Hynning said.
Hynning said the larger lesson extends beyond the festival itself.
“I’m hoping that people take away that it’s good to be a community and just see all the different things that people are doing with their time,” Hynning said. “The world is bigger than what you see out your front door.”
