Vice Chairwoman of Yen Bai provincial People's Committee Vu Thi Hien Hanh (fifth from right) and festival director Le Hai Yen receive the Gold Event Marketing Award 2023. (Photo courtesy of Yen Bai Provincial People's Committee) The festival, which took place on September 24, 2022 at the Nghia Lo Stadium in the northern province of Yen Bai, was organised by the Yen Bai Provincial People's Committee in collaboration with Newday Media JSC.
It was held to raise awareness of art of traditional xoe dance of the Thai ethnic minority in Muong Lo Village that was recognised as the intangible cultural heritage of humanity by UNESCO, and also to promote the village as a national tourist attraction.
The EMA 2023 awards were launched by Campaign Asia-Pacific, a leading media brand for advertising, marketing, and media professionals in the Asia-Pacific region.
The aim of the awards is to honour the regional business events community and celebrate its creativity and innovation.
Judged by a panel of global experts, every year, the awards receive hundreds of entries from leading organisations across the continent in the field of organising cultural, historical and artistic events.
The Muong Lo Cultural and Tourism Festival 2022's win marks the first time a representative from Vietnam, Newday Media, has surpassed many big names in Asia to win the prestigious awards.
The Muong Lo Cultural and Tourism Festival 2022 created a unique cultural and artistic space on an unprecedented scale in the northwest region which was likened to a "living museum" preserving and awakening the thousand-year culture of the Thai people.
Pursuing a completely different direction from conventional festivals, the Thai xoe dance festival is a unique grand theatrical performance that exclusively uses traditional materials and are mostly performed in the Thai language by Thai dancers.
Modern technology such as 3D mapping, laser lighting, and matrix LEDs only serve as supportive tools to enhance and honour their rich cultural values.
The success of the festival has had a powerful impact on the media and tourism sector of the province. In September 2022, Yen Bai received 260,200 visitors, of which 6,600 were foreigners.
"After the successful festival, we promptly prepared the submission for the Event Marketing Awards 2023. We are overjoyed that the event has been awarded the Gold award, which will encourage more attention from event and media professionals throughout Asia to this unique intangible cultural heritage of Vietnam. This will generate more interest and spread the beauty of this heritage to the world," director of the festival Le Hai Yen said.
In 2019, the Muong Lo Cultural and Tourism Festival 2019 also won a gold prize in the Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Travel & Tourism category of the 17th Stevie Awards. A mass xoe dance, which was performed by up to 5,000 people at the festival, secured a silver prize in the Community Involvement Programme of the Year category.
Xoe is a unique type of traditional dance associated with and plays a significant role in the daily life of Thai communities in the northwest of Vietnam, especially in the provinces of Lai Chau, Dien Bien, Son La and Yen Bai. It is performed in various community activities, from festivals to funerals, as a symbol of hospitality.
The art of xoe dance was inscribed on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2021 by the UN culture agency./.
VNA
