THE BELIZE DISTRICT FESTIVAL OF ARTS OFFICIALLY OPENED THIS MORNING:
The Belize District Festival of Arts was officially opened this morning. It involved primary school children from various schools and featured a number of inspiring and innovative presentations in the expressive arts, from the singing of the National Anthem to the Opening Prayer and other entertaining pieces. This is exactly the pace at which Belize wants to strive in order to become the best not only at home, but internationally , says President of the National Institute of Culture and History, Yasser Musa. To reach that goal, Musa explains what NICH is doing.
Yasser:
The Institute of Creative arts is undertaking a very ambitious program which has started already but will kick in even more dramatically in the new coming school year where 12 teachers will be hired specifically to be itinerant teachers to go into the school starting in the Belize District, the City and Rural Areas and those teacher will be skilled in the areas of the expressive arts and the visual arts meaning drama, music, dance and art painting and thing like those craft and they will then go in to the school and train point teachers so that those teacher will have better resources better ways of improving their performances at the festival and even beyond the festival as school activities. I think it s an important thing for teachers in the schools to take on this role however it will be much better to have additional support.
Marion:
Taking this into consideration, how do you see Belize 5 years from now?
Yasser:
Well I think if our plan works out and I have no doubt that It will once we go beyond the Belize district and go into the other districts I think that the more people that are trained the more people that are brought into the expressive domain then we have great talent. Its now how to challenge that talent and bring it forward I think then we will be having a stronger export product so to speak sending our dancers into bigger festivals in the region the Caribbean and central America sending our artists sending our dramatist sending our musicians so that is the objective to harvest what we have here in our country, prepare them not just to perform in belie but also to perform elsewhere.
The children will engage in nightly performances as of tonight at the Bliss Institute of Performing Arts in Belize City, except on May 13th, 16th, 23rd. Each show begins at 6:30 pm. The visual arts displays are open to the public thru to Friday. The theme for this year s Festival of Arts is: Our Youths Seedlings of Belizean Art, Belizean Culture, Belizean Identity.