The Little Art Announce their annual National Child Art Competition – ArtBeat and Exhibition & International Children’s Film Festival (ICFF) in Karachi and Lahore!

The Little Art announces their series of exhibition events in Lahore and Karachi for the 4th ArtBeat– National Child Art Competition and Exhibition 2015. This is to be followed by the International Children’s Film Festival (KICFF) 2015 in collaboration with Teachers’ Resource Centre (TRC) taking place in Karachi and Lahore.

In the 4 editions of The Little Art program, nearly 16,000 children and youth have participated in the ArtBeat– National Child Art competition, 9 exhibitions have been organized across Pakistan, 10 studio workshops were conducted for children with senior artists and art students, and student’s artworks have been promoted in public art galleries and at international art exhibitions like the Sharjah International Biennial for Children’s Arts.

This year’s theme “Kaisa Pakistan” encourages children to reflect on their identity, visualize their culture, draw and paint how they see Pakistan. The 4th ArtBeat received over 6,000 artworks from 210 schools and nearly 25 community organizations from across Pakistan, making it the largest participation of children the competition has ever seen. Some of schools that have been chosen for prizes and exhibits include: Special Education and Training Center, Bostaan’ Ilm School, Rising Stars Girls Elementary School, Bloomfield Hall School, Roots International School, Army Public School, Faisalabad Grammar School, Karachi Cambridge School, Happy Home High School, SLS Montessori & High School, Roots School System and the Bacha Khan Foundation schools from Malakand and Khyber Agency.

This year’s International Children’s Film Festival (ICFF) in Karachi and Lahore will showcase selected 56 films for KICFF from 24 Countries, including several films by young Pakistani film makers with the theme “Future Generation Cinema”. These films have been selected from a total of 960 film entries from 87 countries. This was an unexpectedly huge response to the submission call The Little Art made for international film entries in March 2015. The festival Jury this year that selected top international entries for this year’s festival consisted of known playwright and critic Mr. Asghar Nadeem Syed, Head of Film & TV, NCA, Mr. Majid Saeed, Director and Owner KINO films, Ms. Tazeen Bari, Independent Film maker, Fazal Ahmad and known Independent Researcher at Film Museum Society, Ms. Wajiha Raza Rizvi. The film programming has been carefully curated keeping in mind the young audience largely comprised of school children from different backgrounds. The Karachi and Lahore ICFF will have shows running in both the morning and evening slots from the 5th to 10th October 2015 at both, the Ocean Mall II Talwar and City Auditorium and FB Area venues of Cinepax in Karachi and at Alhamra Auditorium in Lahore from the 16th to 25th of November 2015.

The selected winners from the ArtBeat competition will be awarded cash prizes worth Rs. 300,000 and certificates at the opening events in Lahore and Karachi. As part of the festival The Little Art also announces its national film making competition “Once Upon a Film” inviting young local film makers to send in their short films and to showcase themselves at the Lahore/Karachi International Children’s Film Festival. The competition is open till the 30th of September and is accepting entries from children and young people for short films under 5 mins. The winning entries will be awarded a cash prize of Rs. 5000 and mentorship by The Little Art to work on future film projects.

Director of The Little Art, Shoaib Iqbal said: “Since the inception of The Little Art, one of our main ambitions has been to establish the film festival as a platform for understanding global cultures and celebrating creative expression of our youth through the rich medium of films.

Since 2010, KICFF has been successful in achieving this goal by reaching out to over 45,000 children in schools and communities with the best of children’s cinema from the entire world. We at The Little Art envision to keep providing exposure to young people in the region so they are able to develop their imaginations and engage in intellectual and social development; while also creating memorable experiences through the festival. After all, creative learning experiences and memories are what truly shape any human being”

ArtBeat Exhibition event details:

Lahore
Opening Event: 30th September 2015
Exhibitions: 30th September – 3rd October 2015
Venue: Alhamra Art Gallery
Address: The Mall Road, Lahore

Karachi
Opening Event: 9th October 2015
Exhibitions: 9th –10th October 2015
Venue: Karachi Arts Council
Address: M.R Kyani Road, Karachi, Pakistan

*The exhibitions are free events open to public and there is no need for any passes.

International Children’s Film Festival:

Karachi
Event Dates: 5th – 10th October 2015

Lahore
Event Dates: 16th–25th November

ArtBeat is a project of The Little Art which was initiated in 2012 with a vision to promote visual culture, develop understanding of issues among children and youth from their own perspective, and celebrate children as artists and present children’s view to community.

The Little Art is a non –profit organization working for promoting arts education and providing creative learning opportunities to children and young people in Pakistan.

For more information, visit:
www.thelittleart.org