As the distinctive tone of the engineer (1924-2006) echoed through loudspeakers in the garden of the American University in Cairo’s Tahrir Cultural Center, hundreds of children joined groups to draw, paint, sing and recycle waste.
A musical group of young men roamed the garden of the Cultural Center, behind the children, in a state of great happiness, towards Ewart Hall, with actor Ahmed Amin, the festival’s “guest of honor” among them.
Amin, who recently won the Best Actor award at the Cairo Drama Festival, said in his speech that the festival’s title bears the two words he likes the most: “children… and tales.”
The festival program, which is organized by the Afka Foundation for Arts and Culture in cooperation with the British Council in Cairo, Nahdet El Mahrousa Association, and a number of governmental and private institutions, includes three foreign performances from Germany, Scotland and France, in addition to a number of Egyptian performances and interactive performances.
The program also includes a workshop to raise awareness of sexual harassment of children in cooperation with the non-profit (Safe Egypt) Foundation on October 13.
The founder and artistic director of the festival, Mohamed Al-Ghawi, said, “This year’s session differs from the previous sessions for many reasons, the first of which is that we have fully restored our activity following the Corona pandemic, and today we are in a historic hall at the American University, which can accommodate regarding 1,000 people.”
He added, “In this session, we tried to link most of the performances with the environment and climate because of the climate summit that Egypt will host next month in Sharm El-Sheikh.”
The performances and activities of the festival will be held until the fifteenth of October at the Tahrir Cultural Center at the American University, the Falaki Theater, Prince Taz Palace in the Khalifa District, and the Hanager Theater in the Opera House.