Back-to-back celebrations of Kapampangan culture at the Santungan Ning Kulturang Kapampangan in the City of San Fernando set the Sinukwan (SKK) Festival 2025 in motion. The SKK was inaugurated as Pampanga’s Cultural Hub in June of this year in a partnership between the Department of Tourism – Region III and the Foundation for Lingap Kapampangan, Inc. (FLKI). It has since been converted into a venue for cultural activities such as workshops, competitions, and exhibits, on top of its function as a museum for Kapampangan artifacts.
On November 18 and 19, 2025, the SKK became a gleaming bastion of Kapampangan identity, through the Kurang-kurangan Culinary Competition: Lumpia Challenge in collaboration with Atching Lillian Borromeo’s Kusinero’t Kusinerang Kapampangan, and the Kulyut at Dukit Cultural Exchange Workshop in collaboration with Pampanga Pottery.
Kurang-kurangan Culinary Competition: Lumpia Challenge saw students, elders, parents, and hobbyists taking part in a friendly competition to reinvent the Kapampangan heirloom dish, lumpia. Top-rated reinventions emerged from competitors from Angeles City with their Creamy Spinach Crab Lumpia, Holy Angel University with their Kare-Kare Betute Lumpia with Bagoong Velouté, and the Cansinala National High School of Apalit with their Lumpiang Tugak ng Apung Rita.
Meanwhile, the Kulyut at Dukit Cultural Exchange merged wood and clay, students and masters, in a workshop aimed at providing the master woodcarvers of Guagua and master potters of Sto. Tomas with new mediums for their art— integrating the skill of woodcarving (dukit) with the medium of clay pottery (kulyut). Students from Pampanga High School and Pampanga Statue University also tried their hand at the cultural innovation, creating their own pieces from scratch with the unique medium.
The back-to-back Cultural Hub activities form part of the Department of Tourism’s initiative to activate the Santungan Ning Kulturang Kapampangan as a venue for any and all cultural activity with the goal of preserving, promoting, and reinvigorating the province’s historic and heirloom traditions and practices.
