Culture Festival 2021 (Culfest’21) was one of the top bidder programs organized by the Student Residential College Committee (JKM) from Kolej Tun Dr. Ismail, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). It was an online program that brought all kinds of diverse countries around the world and introduced students to the deep cultural events regarding different countries and races which include foods, languages, dances and games.

Culfest’21 had been a new and fun experience for every participant with cultural diversity and cultural beauty exposures. The program was conducted virtually via Facebook Live as the main platform from the 28th until 29th of May 2021. The opening ceremony of Culfest’21 was started at 3.30 pm with the welcoming speech by Special Officer to the Chairman of Tourism, Youth and Sports Committee State of Johor, Yang Berhormat Datuk Onn Hafiz bin Ghazi and Sir Darren Lai Chai En and officiated by the Director of Students Activity and Development, UTM, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Azlan bin Abdul Latib.

Afterwards, the program proceeded with the Introduction to UTMI by Associate Director Global Education & Experience (GEE), Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mohd Ariffin bin Abu Hassan. A short cultural quiz was conducted in the evening by using the Quizziz platform. Participants were required to log in Artsteps to watch online exhibitions about different cultures around the world. At night, the program continued with a forum titled ‘Student Life: Barriers To Cross-Cultural Communication’ by students from different institutions to share their experiences and opinions about cultural barriers among students.

Besides that, a few asynchronous activities had also been conducted which were cooking shows, photography and video contest. There were nine different food from different countries that had presented on IGTV such as Siu Mai from China, Miso Soup from Japan and Green Chicken Curry from Thailand.

On 29th May, eight language classes had been conducted at the same time from 10.00 am to 12.00 pm which included Arabic, Russian, Japan, Korean, Tamil, German, France and Mandarin. Participants can learn the basic characters, words, and phrases in each language such as greetings, introducing yourself and asking questions. A sharing session titled ‘Standing in The Eye by The World’ was shared by Senior Lecturer from Department of Chemistry, Dr. Mohd Akmali. He had shared his living experience as a student in France.

The closing ceremony was officiated by Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Student Affairs), Prof. Dr. Shamsul bin Sahibuddin. There were also recorded performances by students, Chinese Traditional Dances and a montage video of Culfest’21. Lastly, the winners for all related competitions were announced.

Thank you to all the participants for supporting our program and congratulations to all the winners of Culfest’21. We hope to see you guys again in our next program.