Kids kick off festival fun

BY EMMA KEMP                                                                                                             Kids will get the chance to play the artist when the inaugural Sydney Children’s Festival kicks off this Saturday.                                                                                                    Sydney’s newest centre for contemporary arts and culture, CarriageWorks, will be transformed into a creative playground to satisfy the artistic whim of every 5 to 15-year-old.                  “We wanted to create an event that would focus on the child as the artist and the audience, but primarily as the artist,” said Festival executive producer Loretta Busby.                        “The whole idea is to have fun, so we wanted to create a festival for kids that kids can come away from having learnt or experienced something new without even knowing.”                   The Festival kicks off with Critical Mass, a twilight concert of 100 young flautists who will premiere brand new works by up-and-coming Australian composers in a visual and audio spectacular.                                                                                                               The next two weeks of fun will span all art forms, featuring contemporary and indigenous dance workshops, puppetry, visual arts and cartooning workshops, and a range of free, interactive installations and activities around CarriageWorks.                                         Workshops will be run by high profile performers such as Hip Hop artist Nick Power, Bananas in Pyjamas writer Richard Tulloch, and cartooner Matt Ottley, to name a few. Children’s author Andy Griffiths will entertain with a gold donation talk, while other popular children’s authors will run free story telling sessions.                                                                                   Children can step into the prehistoric world with the Petting Zoo, a lifelike moving display of ancient dinosaurs that can even be fed, providing a unique up close and personal palaeontological experience.                                                                                        The event also caters for those tweens with a flair for photography. Five young winners of a photographic competition will be the Festival’s official photographers, showcasing their images on the big screen throughout the two weeks.                                                             Another exhibition will display photographs taken at the Redfern Community Centre on National Apology Day. The young Indigenous photographers, aged between five and 22, use photographs to capture the range of emotions expressed when Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said sorry to the Stolen Generations of Australia’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.    Ms Busby said her vision was to build a giant space with real artists and theatrical performers so that the children could create the festival themselves.                                          “There’s something really honest about kid’s theatre. If kids don’t like it they’ll tell you, they’re not polite about it,” she said.                                                                            “We want to inspire children to become the next generation of artists, audiences and decision makers. That’s why it’s not face painting and fairy floss.”                                              Ticket prices to workshops will vary with some events free.                                               “We wanted to make it accessible to anyone, all social and socioeconomic groups. Anyone can come down and have a great day for free,” Ms Busby said.