Portage County Cultural Festival's Beginnings
- Cheyenne Antell
- Apr 15
- 6 min read
The Portage County Cultural Festival (PCCF) is celebrating their 34th year in 2025. Started in 1992, PCCF has multiplied the vendors and cultures shown at the event and has done important work in fostering inclusivity and understanding within Portage County. But what spurred PCCF to be founded?
Portage County has always been a majority-white community. In fact, until the early 1980s, this county was part of the whitest congressional district in the United States. The county was filled with a strong community of Polish and German immigrants. The University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point (UWSP) was the strongest point for other cultures to enter the county, but the student body was transient and, after completing a degree, international students were not settling in Stevens Point. The culture shift between the University and the county did not always encourage new graduates to stay. The public school system did not have an English as a Second Language program until 1986 and there were multiple stories of racially-driven violence within Portage County before 1990. While there were certainly instances of other cultural groups settling in the community, the county was almost entirely white.
There were changes to the cultural makeup of Portage County in the late 1900s. The largest shift in demographics was the influx of Hmong refugees. Fleeing Laos after the Vietnam War, Hmong families arrived in Stevens Point and other midwestern cities in a series of waves. The first wave was in the mid-1980s, the second in the early 1990s, and the third around 2004. Right away there were cultural and social clashes; as Nhia Tou Yang explained in the 2014 documentary Finding the Middle Way, if the Hmong families got jobs in the communities they were moved to, they were seen as taking jobs from local families. But if they did not immediately find work, they were seen as abusing the welfare system. Without ESL services available in schools the first wave of Hmong children had a very difficult time learning English and understanding what was happening. Dave Marie was drafted in the Vietnam War and described speaking with a Hmong service veteran in Finding the Middle Way. Dave explained that he was sick to his stomach when the other veteran began to cry, telling Dave that he felt blind in America. He could see and hear the culture around him but couldn’t interact with it; he was lost in this place that was meant to be his new home.
It was these feelings of loneliness that led to community-wide intervention.
1985 - UWSP began hosting campus festivals through their International Club; they were a success on campus and promoted cultural understanding.
The Foreign Student Dinner at UWSP also helped international students exchange ideas and feel more connected to campus culture; that annual dinner was started in 1970.
1985 - Jim Vang reached out to pastor Ken Knutson at Trinity Lutheran Church to ask for help connecting the Hmong community to the greater area.
1986 - The first public school ESL program in Portage County was started.
1987 - The UWSP Hmong and South East Asian American Club (HaSEAAC) began offering support to college students.
1988 - Mary Cayford became a Hmong community advocate with CAP Services and pushed for a community-wide Hmong education day.
Intolerance to immigration was leading to physical fights in Wausau and fear of similar violence in Portage County was why John Jury, executive director for UWSP Student Development, began to question how the UWSP Foreign Student Dinner and International Club Festival could have a larger community reach. Marc and Constance Fang, who were UWSP faculty in the International Student Office, had just received a call from Judy Bablitch, the director of the Portage County Health and Human Services, asking if they knew ways to make Stevens Point a more welcoming place for new residents. The invisible wall between UWSP and Portage County was coming down and the ideas were merging into the Cultural Festival we know today.
As John Jury recalls,
“the base idea was that we all came from somewhere, except for the Native Americans who had been here before colonization. Instead of holding up our local culture that was nervous about assimilation, what if we admitted that we all came here from somewhere else, and the Hmong were just the most recent?”
From this idea came the first PCCF slogan, “Portage County, Meet Yourself”. Welcoming the Hmong community was the primary intent of the first gatherings. As the event popularity increased, the view of the festival shifted to showcasing cultures around the world, not just the cultures found in Portage County. Marc and Constance Fang advocated for introducing the Hmong culture the same way that other cultures would be portrayed at the festival, with equal opportunities for event attendees to explore the displays with all of their senses. This approach had governed the International Festival’s approach to entertainment, food, arts and crafts, exhibits and sales, and hands-on activities.
When Marc, Constance, and John began working together they created a list of representatives from public and parochial schools, churches, and various ethnic groups and they invited everyone to a meeting. It was agreed that this should be a celebration of cultures. By relocating the International Festival to the city, instead of the university, and renaming it the Portage County Cultural Festival, the group hoped to bring the same campus support to this new version of the event. A graphic design student at the UWSP Campus Activities office, Krista Soto, designed the first event logo.
In 1992 PCCF was held at Pfiffner Park in front of the bandshell, under three giant tents. John Jury remembers worrying about all the power cords on the grass. He had extensive experience with the Riverfront Rendezvous and was a great help in making sure the outdoor festival was successful. It was determined that it would be safer to move the event inside for future years and, starting in 1994, the event was moved to the Stevens Point Area Senior High gymnasium. The PCCF volunteers used the Stevens Point Journal for regular advertising and to help convince the community that they deserved a chance to meet other cultures. According to Marcus Fang and John Jury in one 1993 article, the Stevens Point area was “a multicultural community in which people from all ethnic backgrounds will benefit from becoming better acquainted". The regular letters to the editor, advertisements, and featured articles helped the PCCF be seen by a wide variety of readers throughout the early years. In 1996, an article described the goal of the Portage County Cultural Festival as providing “an opportunity for all of us to learn more about our rich background and increase our appreciation for each other”.
The festival has grown over the last 34 years. In 2000 there were 56 participating booths at the event. In 2024 the number grew to 98. In some recent years this festival has seen over 13,000 attendees. By relying on community donations and continuing to be a free event, the Portage County Cultural Festival is able to continue pursuing the primary event goal; to help prepare young people to thrive in the multicultural society into which they are moving.
Take a look at programs from many years of the Portage County Cultural Festival by using the link below! You can click on each brochure to see all the individual pages. Whether you are volunteering or visiting, we can't wait to see you at the next festival.
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