My thought was - the AK05/07/09 festivals are scheduled to take place in February/March every two years - that's Karneval season in cities around the world, from Rio to New Orleans to Nice to Köln. Why not turn the bloody thing into an Auckland Karneval... incorporating aspects of the Pasifika Festival, the Chinese Lunar New Year, the Secondary Schools Maori and Pacific Islands Festival and European-style Carnival/Mardi Gras.

AK Samba- In Wellington, of all places

So many of the elements are already in place: the city has a samba school, we've got kapa haka, dragon dancers, Polynesian performance groups of all ethnicities, brass bands, and maybe we could attract some hippies from Coromandel to do fire poi. This would make for one mother of a parade. So much of this stuff is already "operational" and loved by Aucklanders at events such as the Grey Lynn Festival, the K Road Karnival, Pasifika and the Lantern Festival. We could run the parade as the centrepiece of the arts festival. Close the city for three days and party. It would rock. Let's do it.