August - September Guest Editor Corina Chiran participated in the Hakawy Festival (Storytelling for Kids) 10 - 11th June, 2011 in Egypt.
Corina led drama and cooking workshops for young children at the Hakawy Festival. During this festival she had the opportunity to meet Mohamed El Ghawy, who was one of the organisers of the festival. She was impressed by his enthusiasm in engaging Egyptian children with art, so she decided to do more research on AFCA.
Mohamed Elghawy graduated from the faculty of Arts, French department, Cairo University, Egypt, he started his career in Theatre as an actor & story teller. He conducted a lot of workshops inside Egypt and abroad on how to use theatre in Education, specialist in education through the arts. He founded an independent art organization, AFCA, with the mission of Education through Arts. Aiming to develop the AFCA foundation, he studied art management in Egypt & Jordan and he is completing his fellowship in art management in the Kennedy Center, USA. He created with the team he is building an international storytelling festival, in cooperation with Acting up from Ireland, with the aim to serve arts and culture to all the society.
Mohamed Elghawy has presented practice.ie with a summary of the actions and prerogatives of ACFA:
’AFCA is a cultural foundation that works on a diversity of artistic ways with the endeavor of education through art manifested in Performing Arts (Music, Singing, Theater, Dancing), Visual Art (Painting, sculpting, drawing, Photography) and Cooking, aiming at building creative generations and professional artists. The AFCA Mission is Educating young audience (Kids and teens) & train adults through arts and presenting and producing cultural performances for youths and adults.
’Concerning the art engagement for kids in Egypt it is not very developed. Some people consider that kids don’t need or appreciate arts, and it is a luxury but we see the opposite. For us Arts build the personality of a kid and guide him to be a responsible and effective member in the society
’After the revolution we feel the freedom, no oppression and the hope is in the future generations and kids are these generations. We must educate them through arts to bring Egypt to the top of the world. Kids will change this country and will be able to express themselves.
’Our plans are to bring art to everyone…all social levels, make an intercultural dialogue through arts, bring arts to public spaces, build a team of professional artists, providing them with training to be part of AFCA team for continuing AFCA mission in the future and help people to explore new languages, accents and ideas through art.’
Mohamed Elghawy will be in Ireland later this year for a research trip observing festivals for children.
For more information on the ACFA please visit www.afca-arts.com
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