Origin

Dream Carnival Festival began as a celebration in the community, and then it became a representation of the area. Now it's scale has expanded to a national and even an international artistic march. It is held by the Dream Foundation every October. This activity tries to bring values of life to the public through art and humanity.

The first Dream Carnival Festival was in 2002. The idea was from Gordon Tsai, who joined Summer Solstice Parade & Pageant in Fremont, Seattle and got inspired. It was an artistic parade with more than 100,000 participants. In order to fend off the cloudy winter, people materialized their imagination into all sorts of peculiar costumes, and had a carefree party on the street to welcome the sunny summer.

It is the spirit of community behind this parade touched Gordon Tsai the most. Many sorts of workshops were set up in the Fremont community a month before the parade. Participants of the parade put whatever imaginations on tilts, puppets, masks, costumes, lanterns, festooned vehicles, and dances. Not only all artists from Art Association of Fremont joined the process, but also artists from nearby areas. Some of the artists helped in manufacturing works and some gave advices to residents. Suddenly, art became a glue to put all residents together. The interaction became more frequent, and consensus became more powerful in terms of public affairs.

In Fremont, everyone could be an artist. People are capable of engaging everyone in artistic works, either through art or through games. For example, they recycled waste materials and change them into arts. They want to make the community interesting, attractive, and aesthetic.

This spirit inspired Gordon Tsai. He tried to use Shizhi District as the headquarter and deliver dream carnival festival to the whole country. With Dream Carnival festival, Gordon Tsai wanted to challenge the existing mammonism, encourage community creativity and energy, raise self-value, and introduce the community spirit from Fremont to Shizhi first, then the whole Taiwan. Eventually, he wanted to come up with a carnival so influential that it can represent the top of the world Taiwanese spirit.

Contents of the Carnival

There are two major contents of this event. That is, workshops and parade. 

 The workshop is the core of the whole event. It is the best venue for residents to create and communicate. Workshops are set up in different communities and schools at the same time during the event. Participants exchange their ideas for the performance on the parade. Artists helped them out to put the ideas into reality.

The parade is the best stage for participants' art works. People bring their hard works onto the street. This show party is full of energy of life and desire of performance. The suppressed emotion can be released, the pure happiness can be enjoyed, and the energetic vitality can be displayed. It doesn't matter if you are aged or young. Everyone lights up Taiwan with passion.

Dream Carnival Festival 2012

On October 20th, 2012, the area from Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to Ketagalan Blvd., which is the most political administration district, was turned into the freest and most creative streets. It was the most colorful, most Samba-like, and most passionate day for Ketagalan Blvd. Aboriginal children put on their purest smiles to scream their passion with the drumbeat of Samba. Hakka girls wore their handmade Hakka pattern Samba costumes, and enjoyed themselves in dancing and swaying. Elder grandpas and grandmas from recessive miner villages presented to the world the miner’s Samba of this new era. The route of parade is approximately one kilometer. Thousands of participants gathered in this area to bring this island the brightest smile.