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Art From the People

The event is fast becoming a tradition where musicians, artists and creators are given a showcase to display their art, and today, the organizers told us that it's getting bigger. Here's what you can expect at this year's Festival:

Karen Vernon, organizer
"This year as the previous years we have the food court vendors. Vendors will be displaying and selling jewelry, sculptures - what they have to offer. We have a kids zone, we have a youth section; a youth stage. New to this year we will have a side walk chair competition and a carnival section and of course entertainment."

Kim Vasquez, organizer
"My section is called the kids zone and it is located on Bishop Street, that's the section that runs right beside the Scotia Bank parking lot and that section is filled with activities for children, some of them are just for fun, there is the trampoline, there is face painting and we and we are going to have a magician this year and ICA also has a booth in there that is called the "kids art world" - that's our "pickey" corner as we called it. We have a group of art instructors that we work with that will be in there and they will be doing different art education activities inside that booth. There is going to be for example some visual art, there will be kite making. We will also have the music instruments out there including the steel pan, so children can come to touch a violin, try it out, beat on the steel pan if they want to experience what it is to play a steel pan."

Joseph "Stamp" Romero
"I am working with the youth stage and of course the youth stage caters to the more energetic and more enthusiastic part of our population and give them something to actually put their energies into and so the youth stage is basically for young artist to actually come out there and express their talent. We use the same theme every year "It's your art express it," because art is expressive and so we are trying to encourage rappers, dancers, singers to come out and also compete and not just perform. There is a $300 prize for each of the categories if they win."

Karen Vernon, organizer
"We have 2 special bands coming out apart from the regular entertainers; we have the Carlos Perrote band and special we have the Garifuna Collective. We have a dance group from Mexico, we have the New Generation Dance Company, the Belize National Dance Company, we have Joel August, TR Shine - great entertainers on stage."

The Street Art Festival starts at 2 p.m. and ends at 10 p.m. where entertainment will be provided for the entire family.

Channel 7

Art: The view From The Street

On Saturday, the 4th annual Street Art Festival took over Downtown Belize City where the streets were closed off to make way for a convoy of creators. 7News was there from the very beginning to the end 8 hours later. Here are some highlites:

Channel 7

A Busy Beautiful Day in Belize City: Street Art Festival, Canoe Racing, Cracklin' Pig & More
Yesterday morning, I jumped aboard (I had an excellent night's sleep) the San Pedro Belize Express water taxi for the ride to Belize City. An easy hour and a half later, we pulled in and the conch & lobster boats were looking as beautiful as ever. I know what you are thinking. Belize City beautiful? Well�some of it is. And these working fishing boats look pretty to me from every single angle. No time for dilly dallying with boats. It was about 11:20am and there was a canoe race ending at the Riverside Tavern. This Guinness sponsored Boom to The City Canoe challenge is one of the pre-races for the BIG La Ruta Maya Race that takes place in a few weeks over the Baron Bliss Holiday weekend.

Placencia Sidewalk Arts Festival, a full weekend of fun!
While visiting Placencia over the weekend of February 15th for the annual Placencia Sidewalk Arts & Music Festival, we found there was so much more to the fun event than just the unique and creative art. Strolling along the once regarded "narrowest main street in the world" by the Guinness Book of World Records (Reutlingen, Germany now holds claim to the title) the sights, sounds and smells of grilling meats invited us in to the very heart of the village.