WAK is the acronym for What About Kuching and is a community driven month long festival of the arts, culture and lifestyles of the people of Kuching and Sarawak. WAK happens each October with a multi genre programme centered in the city of Kuching and radiating outwards towards greater Kuching.

WAK is open to everyone who has something to share to a wider audience in the field of Arts, Culture & Lifestyles.

As a collaborator – when our ‘Call for Proposal’ period opens usually from early March to late April, simply log onto our website aboutkuching.com and fill in a proposal form and you will shortly be contacted by the WAK Management Team to discuss and make real your proposed event in October.

As a volunteer – log onto aboutkuching.com and fill up a WAK Ambassador (better known as WAKA) form and our WAKA leaders will get in touch with you. 

What are the things I can expect from WAK, once I joined?

WAK assists in securing staging venues for collaborators by pairing them with our many Venue Partners.

WAK assists in providing certain specified staging costs such as sound, lights, tentages, platforms where required. Such assistance, however, is at the discretion of the WAK Management Team and dependent upon available budget.

The principal advantage to be a WAK Collaborator is that you will enjoy the marketing & promotion push thereby driving greater audiences to your event. This marketing & promotion strategy is executed via radio, social media, printed media as well as other mainstream advertising means,

Great networking opportunities with a great community of talented creatives. 

WAK is open to all creatives to participate. If you are from outside Sarawak, we will pair you with like minded Sarawakian counterparts to facilitate making your proposed event a reality.

In addition to all the materials we have listed on the Proposal Form, we will need for you to carry our WAK logo on all your marketing and promotional collaterals and to shout it out that your event is part of the wider WAK celebrations. You will also be required to attend several ‘pow wow’ discussions prior to the festival.

Please ensure that you have as accurately as possible done a budget for your event and is well aware of all other costs (not supported by WAK) and have sources for these necessary fundings in order to make your event happen. This can be from ticket sales, sponsors, crowdfunding, or other means executed yourselves.

Once we have firmed up your event arrangements at the Collaborators’ Meeting after receiving your proposal, your event is deemed confirmed and will be programmed as such. There MUST BE NO LAST MINUTE WITHDRAWALS after this. Your event will be shouted out loud and wide as part of the entire WAK calendar programme so it is totally unacceptable and very disruptive to have last minute withdrawals.   

Secure your preferred venue – lock in your staging venue of choice first. Once you have booked this with the venue owner who is most likely one of WAK’s Venue Partner. WAK will then follow up and confirm this venue for you and at the lowest cost to you if any. 

Certainly, we at WAK encourages all our collaborators to ‘think outside of the box’ and be bold enough to propose and stage events that are unique that pushes the stereotypical boundaries. The WAK team look forward to share our thoughts and experiences as well as logistical support to make your unique event(s) a hit with the audience.

Be creative and adventurous – audiences are looking for original content that are uniquely and engagingly staged, so go ahead and make waves with bold statements and exciting presentations.

Be meticulous in your planning – make sure you have a realistic working timeline and that all bases are well covered especially finances. As much as WAK hopes to assist all collaborators as much as possible, we are restrained by limited budget that has to be distributed across the entire festival to make the biggest impact on behalf of the entire community.

Secure your preferred venue – lock in your staging venue of choice first. Once you have booked this with the venue owner who is most likely one of WAK’s Venue Partner. WAK will then follow up and confirm this venue for you and at the lowest cost to you if any. In most cases however, such venues will be totally sponsored.

Be early in submitting in your proposal to WAK – this will allow the WAK team to engage with you first to settle matters like venue, tech riders and other support that WAK is able to render you.

Have impactful synopsises and great promo photos and videos – share this with WAK to enable us to create captivating promotional shout outs via mainstream as well as social media, etc.