Guest post contributed by Kira Hunkele (ʻ18)
The first annual West Fest for ISLAND PACIFIC ACADEMY (IPA) took place on April 1, 2017. The all-day festival was put on by IPA’s Advancement Department as a way to include everyone in and outside of the IPA community for a day of fun and entertainment.
“The idea behind West Fest was to make it become like a Punahou carnival for the west side, bring everybody in the community together,” said Amber Camacho, Administrative Assistant.
The theme for this year’s West Fest 2018, held on April 7, was “Flower Power,” and was decided collectively by IPA’s Advancement Department.
“We had several ideas, I think one was superheroes, and there were all different eras, but our idea was to have a theme that was colorful, and we wanted something that was easy that everybody could participate in,” said Kahala Pratt, Advancement Marketing Specialist.
In keeping with the main idea behind West Fest—bringing everyone together—the members of IPA’s Advancement Department decided to have a friendly t-shirt logo design contest across all grade levels.
“For the logo we wanted to have the kids involved, for them to take ownership, and to have them come up with a logo and put that on a t-shirt so that they can see their work displayed,” said Camacho
Gabrielle Lum (’20), won the t-shirt logo design contest this year. She entered the contest to try something new and did not expect to win.
“I was surprised and shocked at the same time because I didn’t know that my design was that good and I don’t know why they chose me, but I think what helped was my reasoning behind, why I chose those certain designs for the actual t-shirt” said Lum.
Lum believes that everyone is unique and different in his or her own way and incorporated that belief into her overall design.
“We are all individual flowers that are from different places, but we all have something in common. Which is why all the flowers are different, but they all are the same color. We are also all connected which is why they are placed at different places around the world and are connected by the streamer-like things. We all come together,” said Lum.
Doug Blackington, Secondary Physics and Chemistry teacher, took charge of guiding the different grade levels on designing their games for West Fest.
“There was a need for the school to acquire some carnival games and what the school supports is student involvement with these kinds of projects, so it was brought to my attention that the engineering students could come up with a design and then construct a game for West Fest,” said Blackington.
Each class in grades 6-12 designed and created a game for West Fest. Two students, Ryan Fitzgerald (’21) and Michael Jenkins (’21), helped design a take on a classic game: corn hole. Their game used a vertical board with ten holes cut into it of varying sizes, the object being to toss the flower beanbag into the hole to win a prize. Creating the game and figuring out a design to go with the theme was very time consuming. For Fitzgerald and Jenkins, it many hours in and outside of the classroom to complete.
“Originally, we thought we were going to do a darts game, but then it evolved into this corn hole game so it went through about twelve iterations taking an hour for each drawing, then maybe another two-three hours to put it together,” said Fitzgerald
Pratt and Camacho worked with former Director of Advancement Charmaine Hauanio-Kuewa on gathering the vendors and designing the flyers, as well as figuring out the cost.
“The best part of West Fest was working with the community and we tried to get all our vendors and sponsors from our community, so the radius we were looking at was Kapolei, Waianae, ʻEwa, and Lanikai,” said Pratt.
Some of the vendors included Kapalawai, Sunset BBQ, Hula Shake, Hula Boba, Brain freeze, and families on the west side who owned restaurants and wanted to share their food with everyone else.
Each member of IPA’s Advancement Department brought their own unique strengths and skills to organizing and producing this year’s West Fest. Tricia Murata, Creative Design Specialist, Camacho, and Kuewa stood out in particular.
“Kuewa is a power house in her own right, she understands events, she understands entertainment and Camacho is very organized and keeps all the mundane paperwork together, and then Murata is a very talented graphic designer,” said Pratt.
This year’s West Fest had an excellent turn out with students, friends and family all enjoying games, food and each other. Looking back on this event, IPA and the Advancement Department hope to continue with West Fest in future years, with the hope that it will continue to bring IPA and the west side of Oahu together.
