Wonderful Indonesia: HelloFest Malang nuturing army of social media ambassadors
Wednesday, 29 Apr, 2016
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At the ICCC – Indonesia Creative Cities Conference in Malang recently, Tourism Minister ARIEF YAHYA proclaimed Malang’s elevation as the newest Creative City, after Bandung Solo and Yogjakarta. Meantime, other cities wait to qualify. Each city must have the capacity to nurture creativity much like incubators of start-up businesses. They’ll match the criteria of C2C – Creativity to Commerce and meet tourism product and business benchmarks validated by community participation. Qualifying cities elevated to Creative City status would be uniquely vibrant, abuzz with creative solutions and become Top 10 must-visit cities in Wonderful Indonesia.
For travel agents, modern day Malang really started growing in 1879 after the 90km railway from Surabaya was completed. That’s 137 years ago. Today this second biggest city in East Java Province is surrounded by tea and coffee plantations, swathes of sugar cane fields and green apple orchards. Sitting 1,500 feet above sea level, it enjoys a mild climate and is a favourite hill station retreat from Java’s lowland heat ever since Dutch colonial times. Malang’s other claim to fame is as a centre of higher education. It has 17 universities whose students hail from Bali, Madura, Nusa Tenggara, East Timor, Papua, Maluku, Sulawesi and Borneo. They feed a growing pool of digital content providers helping Malang earn the accolade of a Creative City.
ICCC is a 3 in 1 Conference + Expo + Festival of Wonderful Indonesia. It’s a natural fit for HelloFest as the main attraction for community participation with crowds streaming in for a marathon 10 hour movie concert.
Sunday 3 April. Its 12 noon. Hot and sunny outside as youthful crowds throng downtown University of Malang grounds. They browse carnival booths promoting toys, handicrafts, apparel, comics and animation classes before streaming into the 3,000 seat capacity Graha Cakrawala auditorium. Short movies of 15 minutes intersperse with 8 minute and 1 minute videos, Cosplay performances and animated cartoons that make you laugh or cry. This marathon show runs from 11.00am to 9.00pm punctuated with live performances by local bands and stand-up comedians. Indonesian Youtube artistes performing on stage are recorded on phones by adoring fans who later upload onto YouTube hoping against hope it goes viral.
At 5.00pm Wonderful Indonesia Festivals deputy director Eddy Susilo bounds on stage to deliver a short welcome speech …. "Its wonderful to be with you for HelloFest Malang Raya. Are you guys having a really wonderful time?" The crowds roared their approval. Eddy makes a clarion call for participation in upcoming ‘My town & My city’ video contests. Then with both hands uplifted and waving, his ‘sincere thanks for your precious presence today…… ‘ is met with rousing shouts and raised hands waving a fond farewell. The energy and tension is palpable as Emcees announce the next event of made in Malang short films.
A friend beside me commented "This is like preaching to the converted." This happy boisterous crowd you see interacting with performers on stage are animated, responsive, articulate. They’re most likely your YouTube video star wannabes and loyal fans of HelloFest too.
HelloFest is the brainchild of native son Wahyu Aditya with the first short-film screening in 2004 attended by a crowd of just 200. It grew organically over the years until in 2014, a record 40,000 swamped HelloFest in Jakarta. Showcasing the best in Indonesia short movies and animations, HelloFest has been curated for international screenings in Tokyo, London, Bristol, Berlin and Frankfurt. On Facebook its accumulated over 46,695 "Likes" with 16,313 talking about it on Twitter.
From 10.4 million visitors in 2015, Wonderful Indonesia is currently on target for 12 million visitors in 2016. Partnering HelloFest is part of branding strategy to maximise social media channels to help achieve 20 million visitors by 2019.
Text and photos by Paul Chern.
TravelMole Editorial Team
Editor for TravelMole North America and Asia pacific regions. Ray is a highly experienced (15+ years) skilled journalist and editor predominantly in travel, hospitality and lifestyle working with a huge number of major market-leading brands. He has also cover in-depth news, interviews and features in general business, finance, tech and geopolitical issues for a select few major news outlets and publishers.
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