After the outstanding success of its first round, faculties of fine arts, art education, and music education in Zamalek organise their second annual arts carnival that hosts hundreds of students, art fans, and public audience. The carnival will be held on 24 February and will showcase various kinds of arts for the interested attendees.
“This year, the carnival is divided into three sections. The first one contains the exhibitions where the students’ paintings, photos, projects, and handicrafts are sold,” said Dr. Ehab Ezzat, vice dean for society and environment development.
The second partition contains commercial handicrafts, accessories, and clothes made by amateurs and professionals from outside the faculty.
“We do not only give our students a chance to market their products, we also give ordinary people a chance to meet their target audience and start building their own brand,” he added.
The third part of the exhibition includes other kinds of arts such as puppet shows, free portrait drawing sessions, and Indian dancing shows.
“The embassy of India contributes with a band and a dancing group that will introduce people to the Indian culture,” Ezzat noted.
In his opinion, the main goal of this carnival is the societal contribution. “We need normal people to get familiar with our faculties’ different activities and the quality of our students’ work in different fields. We also aim at making a close connection between three important faculties who are able to show their work to the surrounding community,” he added.
The carnival gives all the students an equal chance to exhibit their work. The faculties do not have any preference or filtration of any of the presented materials. However, the preparations of the carnival are usually not easy. It goes through a long process of meetings with the student union members, holding a survey, submitting a proposal for the carnival, and choosing the members of the organisation teams.
“Last year, we received an amazing feedback from the participants and the guests. This time, we will hold the carnival on Friday in order to provide more people with the freedom to come and we expect larger numbers of people to attend,” Ezzat said.
However, that is not the only project by the arts faculties. “We are currently working on a big project called “Eshaa” that aims mainly at developing slum areas. It’s a mid-term project that will finish within a year and two months,” he added.
For instance, with the help of other faculties, such as medical schools, the project will be able to survey the deprived areas and map diseases in each of them.
“However, the faculty of fine arts is supposed to provide a programme for improving the arts education in the deprived schools and study the lifestyle there to know how arts can be used to utilise the talents of those residents,” he concluded.
