Marketing our culture

By Sun Advocate

I stated in the photo feature on the back page of the Sun Advocate today that Price was built as a melting pot of many cultures and people from a wide variety of ethnic backgrounds. These cultures and their traditions are what continues to make Price extremely unique. The feature focused on the popular Greek Festival, an annual event that brought over 6,000 people out to enjoy food and dancing.
As I stood in line to get the food on Saturday and later watched the many young dancers perform I wondered why the community is not more involved in marketing the event.
I talked to Terry Bikakis Monday morning and he has tried to promote the event on a much larger scale for many years now. His thoughts include inviting the college to produce a couple Greek tragedies during the festival and getting merchants or other people involved to expand the event to make it even a bigger draw. He envisions everyone in town dressing up in traditional Greek costumes while the celebration is going on.
The Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City began on a small scale and now, much like Ashland, Ore., have become major tourism draws monopolizing the Shakespeare theme.
Business and economic development leaders in the community are constantly talking about ways of reaching out and bringing in more people to Carbon County to enjoy the vast diversity of the area. The Greek Festival would be a natural.
I have seen a lot of progress in the two short years that I have lived the area. I have witnessed this progress and seen the excitement as new ideas become realities. In this process I am constantly aware of other situations where we can do to more to brand our community and make it a destination location instead of just a spot where people stop to get gas or eat as they travel back and forth between Colorado, Salt Lake City and Moab. The more I become connected to the business and recreation facets of the community, the more opportunities I see for growth.
I have visited many small communities throughout the west and witnessed examples of them harnessing their uniqueness. Many of these bright spots have grown through their cultural, recreational or historical backgrounds. We have all those attributes and more. We are accessible to major metropolitan areas, we have a wider variety of sights than many of those places do as well as more recreational opportunities than most communities in the country. Few communities have the historical background and cultural differences that Carbon county enjoys.