BONTOC, Mountain Province – The successful staging of the 11th edition of the Lang-ay Festival, the province’s own crowd drawing event, will have to be assessed and evaluated in order to improve its identified weak areas for the benefit of a much bigger festival next year.
Gov. Leonard G. Mayaen said stakeholders involved in the conduct of this year’s festivities must already come out with their assessment and evaluation on how the 20-day event was done in order to start the preparations for a bigger festival next year because of the expected influx of expats from the different parts of the global village as Bontoc will be next year’s host of the International Igorot Conference.
“We are elated over the outcome of the government supported and community led festival and we want to continue with such partnership because it has significantly improved the staging of the events lined up for the festival,” Mayaen stressed.
The governor asserted the promising results of the initial staging of the private-public partnership (PPP) in the conduct of the festival is worth investing in order to further improve in the areas where there are factors to be enhanced beneficial in attending to the clamor of the audience.
According to him, the provincial government shelled out some P2 million to the Lang-ay Festival Organization, Inc. to bankroll this year’s pilot test of the PPP for the festival while the organization worked on its own to look for other resources required to stage the numerous events lined up for the festival.
Mayaen cited the results of the community assessment should be documented in order to be the basis for organizers to improve on future hostings of the province’s festival.
Except for the heavy traffic that the festival caused along the major roads of this capital town, local residents and visitors alike were amazed over the cultural presentations of the 10 municipalities that really prepared for the streetdancing parade which was one of the major highlights of the festival.
Mayaen said this early, organizers of the festival must start preparing for their blockbuster activities next year when expats are expected to flock to the province for the IIC in order to provide them with satisfying pe5rformances aside from their chance to visit the scenic destinations of the province.
He expressed his gratitude to all the people who worked behind the successful staging of this year’s festival, saying that if not for their unity, teamwork and cooperation, the festival would have not been successful and that there could have been no active participation from the local residents.
He claimed the provincial government wants to involve the community in the planning and conceptualization of future crowd drawing events so that the presentations will come out to be the best performances and that participation will be enormous for the visitors to actually appreciate the spirit of the people of closely working together for a successful festival and sustain the honor and pride of the province.
Mayaen said from now on, the staging of the Lang-ay festival will be separate from the celebration of the province’s founding anniversary which has been fixed every April in order not to grab the limelight from the celebration of the province’s birth. By Dexter A. See
