Karachi Youth Festival kicks off today

Ahmed Shah calls for teaching arts to students in various grades

KARACHI: The seven-day Karachi Youth Festival will start today (Wednesday) at the Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi.

This was announced by Arts Council President Ahmed Shah while addressing a press conference on Tuesday. A large number of students from various schools, colleges and universities will showcase their creative and artistic talents in the festival through genres including painting, photography, music and essay writing, said Shah who was accompanied by Arts Council Youth Committee Chairperson Asjad Bukhari and Youth Pilot Project Coordinator Danyal Umer.

"We have been organising this activity for the last 10 years. Hundreds of students, teachers and people have attended the festival, which has positively impacted society especially the youth," Shah said.

The Arts Council president called for the need to teach arts to children. "We have repeatedly suggested that the government include fine arts in the syllabus of different grades but so far it has not been achieved," he said, adding that the council would try to make the festival a model for art education which may encourage the government to follow suit.



"Last year, we trained 17,000 students of school, college and university levels belonging to all the six districts of Karachi. The training was provided in essay writing in Urdu, Sindhi and English, speech and declamation, painting, photography and music," Shah said.

Governor Mohammad Zubair will be the chief guest at the grand function of the festival, the Arts Council president said. He added that at the grand function, shields will be given to vice-chancellors, principals and teachers who cooperated with the council in training their students in creative fields.

Shah claimed that over a decade, around one million youths had benefitted from different training programmes arranged and conducted by the Arts Council. This year, the council had selected 109 educational institutions from six districts of Karachi whose students would be trained in arts by around 100 instructors, he said.