Piñon Elementary to host multicultural Around the World in White Rock festival

White Rock’s school gym will become a walk-through of the county’s many cultures when Piñon Elementary School hosts the 14th annual Around the World in White Rock festival on Tuesday, May 5, starting at 5:30 p.m. The event, presented jointly by Piñon Elementary and Chamisa Elementary School, brings together dance, music, games, crafts and food tastings in one evening under the same roof.

The festival is built as an interactive open house rather than a stage show. Organizers said additional presenters can still join and bring cultural displays with artifacts, photos, trivia or hands-on elements, keeping the event open to families, students and community groups that want to add their own traditions to the mix. Cultures already represented include Brazil, Chile, Korea, France, India, Ireland and Honduras, a range that shows how the festival has become a local snapshot of the community’s changing identity.

The event also has a student-service layer. Los Alamos High School Key Club members will sell cotton candy, and the Hawaiian Ice truck will be on site, adding the kind of family draw that makes a school event feel more like a neighborhood gathering than a one-night program. For White Rock, where schools often serve as the most visible civic meeting places, that mix of student involvement and cultural presentation gives the evening its reach.

Around the World in White Rock began with teachers Renee Mitsunaga and Julie Bulthuis, who started it to celebrate the diversity of Los Alamos County and nearby communities. The festival was launched with support from a Los Alamos Public Schools Foundation Great Ideas Grant for a multicultural fair in 2013, and earlier coverage identified it as the 10th annual event in 2024. The move from a grant-backed fair to a 14th annual tradition shows how a small school idea can take root and keep growing.

The setting matters. White Rock had 5,852 residents in the 2020 Census, with 25.9 percent under age 18. Census data also showed a community that is 16.9 percent Hispanic or Latino, 2.2 percent Asian, 2.4 percent American Indian and Alaska Native, and 15.7 percent two or more races. In a place that small and that young, a festival built around shared food, music and hands-on displays does more than entertain. It helps knit families, schools and neighborhoods into a single county conversation about who lives here and how those communities are seen.