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An unusual bus tour will explore Hmong culture and attend the community’s most important annual festival. Guided by Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program (CHAP) Director Lynne Williamson, the tour will travel to Enfield, where the majority of Connecticut’s 500 Hmong live. Tour participants will join the Hmong to celebrate their New Year. The tour is a collaboration between CHAP, a program of The Institute for Community Research (ICR), and Manchester Community College. The tour will depart from Manchester Community College’s Parking Lot C on Saturday, November 17, 2007, at 1 pm, and will return to MCC by 8 pm. The fee for the tour, which includes food, is $55.
The Hmong are a tribal group originally from Mongolia who migrated to Laos, where many still live today. Many Hmong assisted the United States during the Viet Nam war, and came to this country as refugees in the 1970s. Williamson has worked with the Hmong for ten years, documenting their traditional cultural activities and organizing projects that help to maintain language and traditional arts within the community. “We are lucky to have such a vibrant Hmong community in Connecticut, because they continue to practice fascinating traditions that extend back hundreds of years,” Williamson says. “At the same time, they have settled into our communities as neighbors and fellow citizens. The tour gives us a rare chance to enter into their cultural activities as honored guests.” The New Year festival, always held late in the year, includes the ball toss, a game between young people that is a courtship ritual; a fashion show of different tribal costumes; a cultural presentation of dance and song; and a community-prepared feast with traditional foods. Hmong leaders will speak to the tour group about the community’s history, and artists who make the elaborate and distinctive Hmong costumes will demonstrate and sell their work.
This is the first in a new series of cultural bus tours organized by ICR and Manchester Community College. During 2008, additional tours will focus on Franco-American, Eastern European, and Cape Verdean communities and festivals in Connecticut. The bus tours series is also supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism. For more information about the tour, please call Lynne Williamson at 860-278-2044 x251 or email her at Lynne.Williamson@icrweb.org. Advanced registration is required; please call Manchester Community College Continuing Education at 860-512-3232 or 860-512-2800 to register. Registration form (pdf).
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The Institute for Community Research is an independent research institute that conducts applied research and supports community enhancement programs on issues of health, education and cultural heritage. Its Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program encourages and promotes traditional artists and their communities through an active process of documentation, technical assistance, and public presentations to bring their work and the history of their communities to new audiences.
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