Six couples took the Downtown Fullerton Plaza stage. A tae kwon do student held his partner's hands as if holding two cups. The instructor recited dance steps into his headset: step, step, rock, step, lift. The leaders twirled their partners, laughing at their fumbled footwork and filling with glee when they turned successfully.

But learning how to swing dance was only one of the interactive activities at the annual Faces of Fullerton festival April 25.

"Some of the people that have grown up in Fullerton say there's nothing for me," said organizer Chris Lamm. She said residents have asked her to "have an event that will bring everyone together and tell their stories."

And the community's diversity is apparent. Smoke wafted from the Korean barbecue area while students performed ballet folklórico. The event, which is in its seventh year, is laid out like the Orange County city's neighborhoods. The organizers clustered each community, including business, education, arts and ethnicity together to achieve the feeling of walking through Fullerton's neighborhoods of North Hills, Amerige Heights, Valencia and West Fullerton, among others.

The Fullerton Collaborative, an organization composed of individuals, businesses and social service agencies, put on the event and works to "create a healthy cultural community for Fullerton," Lamm said.

They attempt to serve the city's nearly 138,000 residents by organizing community outreach programs. One of the Fullerton Collaborative's programs educates residents about the hazards of obesity, so staffers served turkey dogs and salads instead of hot dogs, for a healthier food alternative. But other food from the city's ethnic community's was also available.

"The concept was to celebrate our diversity by bringing friends and neighbors together and start a conversation," she said. "We didn't want a resource, health or kid's fair. We wanted it to be inter-generational."

This year's event was the largest in its seven-year history. Each patron was also given a map for each booth, which Lamm prefers to call an "interactive area." They received stamps for each area they visited and five stamps made the map-holder eligible for raffle prizes. She said this approach was their attempt to get people to participate in the interactive areas, about half of which are new this year.

"The real goal is to keep it as a free event," said former Fullerton Mayor Sharon Quirk. "People just want to get out of their houses and do something that's inexpensive. They're looking for opportunities to keep their checkbooks in check."

Quirk estimated there were about 6,000 guests throughout the day.

Orange Korean Christian Reform Church youth pastor Johnny Park also noticed the upswing of Korean involvement in recent years, which Quirk cited as one of the fastest growing populations in Fullerton. 

"Any time there's an immigrant community, one family finds out and word travels," Park said.

"Oftentimes they're underrepresented because they don't know about these kinds of things," he said. "They're active, but mostly within the Korean community."

Park encouraged his students to be more active community members by participating in barbecuing or filling plates with noodles, steak and salad for visitors. He pushed for it because he thinks "this is what the world is more like than what we see."

"It's nice that Fullerton offers something free to do," said Kaitlyn Tice, 24, who was volunteering at the Fox Theatre's interactive booth. "You can do a lot more [in Fullerton] than go to the movies." This week children learned how to swordfight at the Fox booth and earned an eye patch and a stamp when they were done. Tice said that they gave away more than 1,000 patches by 1:30 p.m.

But Susan Kim, who attended the event to see her daughter Caroline, 6, tap dance, didn't like the community setup. "It can be used also as separating communities instead of one city of neighborhoods." But she had fun taking her children to the art booths and enjoyed the sunny weather.

Despite this year's organization style, some residents thought it worked. "It's a city where everyone kind of knows each other," said Davis Barber, a freelance photographer. "If you forget your wallet in a restaurant they'll probably feed you anyway."

Barber, who is on the Board of Trustees for the Fullerton Collaborative, set up a camera at Faces of Fullerton for his audio/visual project called "Fullerton Stories."

"Everyone has an interesting story, it's just a matter of who will listen," Barber said. In 2004 he took pictures of 2,004 residents to capture the community's diversity.

"If you put 2,000 of these pictures together you get a pretty nice portrait," he said as he pointed to the banner of portraits of longtime Fullerton residents, children and city council members behind him. Even though the venue was too loud to film interviews, Barber felt that Fullerton was a community easily conducive to his project.

"It's kind of a melting pot," Barber said. "It's about what you contribute not what you get. We're creating history."