Children’s Festival of Arts begins this week

It’s an annual event that showcases the talents of the Belize District’s most creative students. News 5’s Jacqueline Woods has a preview.

Jacqueline Woods, Reporting

The eleventh Belize District Schools Festival of Arts will see two hundred and fifty entries.

Beverly Smith-Lopez, Director, Belize Arts Council

“I’ll tell you something, the two hundred and fifty entries are a little to what we could have received. What we did this year though is we are trying to raise the standard of the Festival of Arts and we have put a ceiling on how many entries each school can send in per division and per discipline.”

The schools were given a year to prepare for the competition. Director of Belize Arts Council, Beverly Smith-Lopez says schools were periodically assessed to see that they would be ready for the Festival.

Beverly Smith-Lopez

“As you know we have been sending itinerant teachers to schools to prepare for the Festival, to prepare overall for the expressive arts. And you can go to many schools and on their curriculum they have expressive arts and for example, a school like Holy Redeemer, every Wednesday is dedicated to the expressive arts, so we have been grooming them for the last year.”

This year the festival takes place under the theme, “Celebrating our Children as Artists”. Those children, will be creating performances focusing on issues that directly affect them.

Beverly Smith-Lopez

“We have pointed out things like disaster, drugs and abuse, is because of what our children are going through. As you know, arts is a means of expressing one self, it’s a therapy and we think our children are in quite a problem, a lot of them and they need to bring this out so we are giving them the opportunity to do this.”

The Arts and Craft Exhibition will take place at the Holy Redeemer Parish Hall from May sixth to the tenth. The performing arts section, runs from May thirteenth to the seventeenth, and from the twentieth to the twenty-fourth. Students and parents are especially being encouraged to attend the Festival at Holy Redeemer Parish Hall. Jacqueline Woods reporting for News 5.

The Festival of Arts Committee says there will be three Golden Nights from Wednesday the twenty-ninth to Friday the thirty-first, at 7:00 p.m. Tickets for those events are five dollars each.