Songkran
The Thai Cultural Council seeks to host Songkran, or Thai New Year, at the Minnesota State Capitol. Songkran is an important festival in Thai culture as it symbolizes moving into the new year with community, family, and elders. Due to the separation caused by COVID-19, this Songkran festival will be our largest event yet with planned performances, bazaars, markets, and food stalls all curated with the aim of celebrating Thai and SE Asian culture together with our Minnesotan community.
2022-2023 Cultural Heritage and Community Identity Grants - Winter 2021
Our top three outcomes for this program are to provide access to traditional Thai and Southeast Asian art education, to provide a safe space for our community to celebrate and heal, and to facilitate cross-cultural learning and understanding. The performances and collaboration with the artists allow us to build bridges and connect with old and new artists alike.We are also excited to introduce new performances and groups from around the Midwest and country to allow even more opportunity for education. In the past, our events such as Songkran and Thai Sunday Markets often encouraged cultural artists to return annually to share new displays of artistry and pride for our culture. In terms of providing a safe space for our community to celebrate and heal, the Thai Cultural Council selected the Minnesota State Capitol, which will be able to accommodate more community members and guests. We hope the new location adds an additional sense of renewal to the festival, symbolically stepping into a new space and new year at the same time.With this event, we have created a unique celebration of Songkran, the Thai New Year, that features Thai and Southeast Asian artists from around the world, varied traditional food vendors, a bazaar, and traditional ceremonies. Additionally, we have had similar proposed outcomes for events and programs in the past, which we have measured through qualitative data methods, primarily interviews.
The Minnesota Songkran Festival will be much larger than past programs, we want to focus on developing multiple methods of data measurement that will allow us to get a broader perspective of outcomes achieved. We will be using interviews, attendance records, vendor records, and surveys to track proposed outcomes and how they were achieved. Collecting this data will measure proposed outcomes by giving a better idea of populations reached via attendance records. Additionally, interviews and surveys will be incentivized so that we can more closely measure the outcomes of cross-cultural learning and Thai and Southeast Asian art education. These interviews and surveys will ask the participants to record what they knew about Thai and Southeast Asian art and culture before attending and what they know after, as well as measuring a sense of community.