Belize District Festival of Arts moves out of the Bliss
The Primary School Festival of Arts is currently underway around the country. It is a much anticipated event and students appear on week nights on stage to perform songs, dances and skits that bring to light the country’s diverse cultures. The Belize City District Festival has normally been staged at the Bliss Institute and highlights of each night’s performances make it to the nightly news. But this will no longer be the case and in fact the festival is moving away from the Bliss to the Holy Redeemer Parish Hall. News Five today spoke to the National Coordinator for Expressive Arts in Schools as well as to the Director of the Institute of Creative Arts who explained the changes.
Leroy Green, Natl Coord, Expressive Arts in Schools, Ministry of Ed.
“NICH informed us at the ministry late last year that due to a new policy, the festival would not take up the month of May at the Bliss Center for the Performing Arts. They also made clear to us that they would still support the festival financially and technically. As a matter of fact, I can say that Belize District has gotten twelve thousand dollars from NICH, the other districts have gotten five thousand each and the Belmopan/Cayo area has gotten seven thousand dollars for their festival.”
Greg Vernon, Director, ICA
“The Belize District festival—what we are trying to do and why it’s not at the Bliss is that we’re trying to line up all the district festivals that they would have equal leverage coming into national festival. And of course, you know to run the Bliss with the air-conditioning along with the lighting is very expensive. Looking at it, we found that it was not feasible for us to do it at the Bliss Center for Performing Arts. We, at ICA are very much interested so we have founded the district festival and all district festivals are being funded through ICA. What we have done also, is we invited the districts to come in and participate in the National Festival of Arts, which will be held at the Bliss Center for Performing Arts. The Institute of Creative Arts has a film unit but again we can’t travel the entire of Belize covering artistic work and so we wish we had the staffing that would be able to cover all these areas. But unfortunately, we live in Belize, three hundred thousand population and the funding and financing is not there.”
Leroy Green
“For the very first time NICH has also given a thousand to each district to support the Preschool Festival of Arts which had traditionally had to support themselves. The Belize District Pre-school Festival of Arts, they have not given any money for that, but that one is being held at the Bliss.”
Jose Sanchez
“Some parents would be upset that their kids aren’t being showcased on the stage at a better looking facility that they would have otherwise seen such as the Bliss.”
Leroy Green
“To be totally honest and I know some people will be upset when I say this but I think for a certain extent for Belize City, parents have been spoilt since the new Bliss has been built because prior to that for years the festival has been at the Parish Hall and when you look at the districts none of them have a building such as the Bliss. And yet parents out there are proud to see their children on the stage because a stage is a stage. The idea behind the festival is to get children to have experience in the arts.”
The national festival will be held at the Bliss institute in June, it will showcase the artistic talents of fifteen of the best performances from each district.
