First-of-its-kind festival promotes creative talents of children

Children show their talents through songs and drawings.

Talented, creative children need extracurricular activities that will help polish and improve their innovative works. In this vein, the editorial board of Osama magazine organized a festival for youngsters to help them develop and show off their talents. Around 24 schools took part in this festival, with students participating in different fields such as poetry and story writing.

Osama is a magazine that is dedicated to children and their issues. 

“Through this festival we aimed to help children to show their abilities to others,” said Amar al-Ariqi, editor-in-chief of Osama magazine, adding that around 20,000 children took part in the festival. Creative children need someone to light the way by which they can walk, al-Ariqi said, and it was in the development of this thought that they decided to hold this festival.

“By holding the festival, we want to make children more active and create an atmosphere of competition between them,” said Abudl-Qaher al-Hamoudi, managing editor of Osama magazine. All the schools which participated in this festival encouraged their creative students to take part, he added. 

Al-Hamoudi said that the magazine receives letters from different schools saying that there are many creative students in their schools. Because of this, the creators of Osama magazine have created a page entitled, ‘Young Creative’. “Through this page we encourage students’ participation. Many schools have told us that there are many creative students in their schools and want them to have their own chance to show their work. Because of this, we started thinking of something else which might help all students to participate and the idea of holding a festival came to mind.” 

Al-Hamoudi said that the students who participate in the festival have a chance to be published in the magazine, as a way to provide incentive for the childrens’ creativity.

“Holding such a festival, which is the first of its kind, is something wonderful. We did make some mistakes, but nothing has been a huge problem because the festival is a success,” said al-Hamoudi. He added that not all schools took part in the festival, but there were students from many different schools which is in itself another success.

Al-Hamoudi said that they did face some difficulties in organizing the festival. For example, many schools did not want secondary students to participate because they are not considered children, while other schools protested, saying that there are many creative secondary school students who should also have the chance to be a part of such a festival.  Al-Hamoudi also said that there were schools that originally refused to participate, but that later came and said they wanted to take part, making it difficult for the organizers because there was not sufficient space for those additional students.   

Abdul-Salam al-Jawfi, Minister of Education, praised the festival and thanked Osama magazine for helping creative students showcase their abilities. He said that he always tried to attend such festivals in order to encourage creative students, considering it a duty of his ministry. Al-Jawfi promised that his ministry would cooperate with Osama magazine in order to hold this festival each year.

Saleh Ba Surrah, Minister of Higher Education, said that encouraging young children is an important message of the community, and said that he hoped that this festival would indeed be an annual event. He called upon parents and officials to pay particular attention to children in their early years in order to discover their abilities and encourage their steps in developing their talents.

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