Penang celebrates its Unesco Heritage status with a pulsating fiesta. Performances by local and foreign talents will fill the whole month of July, giving no one an excuse for missing it.
About four months ago, the Penang state government put out a call for people to submit their ideas for the year’s 2010 Unesco celebrations, conceived to be a one-day event. As Joe Sidek listened to the plans, he found himself thinking about what he called his “secret desire”: to hold a large-scale festival. “I always wanted to do a festival,” he said. “Why do just one show?” But he still didn’t pitch his big idea, not until after the third meeting, when George Town World Heritage Incorporated (WHI) general manager Maimunah Mohd Sharif pulled him aside and asked, “Why don’t you do it?”
So Sidek pitched. “At the first meeting,” he said. “I said, ‘I’ll need a million ringgit.’ It shocked the state because they’re not used to things like that. They kept saying they can’t, they didn’t have the money...” The state government did, however, manage to raise RM400,000 in the end from various state agencies.
