KARACHI: The two-day 60th Children’s Literature Festival (CLF) is to be held on August 7 and 8 and it will be open to all from 9am to 5pm on both days at the Arts Council of Pakistan, Karachi.

“The CLF this year has several learning strands, including science, mathematics, music, theatre and theatre workshops, puppetry, arts and craft, clay modelling, movies, heritage or virsa, environment, story-telling sessions, dramatic readings, book launching, plenary sessions on subjects such as how to improve the curriculum, the portrayal of girls and women in children’s literature, etc,” said CLF founder and CEO of Idara-i-Taleem-o-Aagahi (ITA) Baela Raza Jamil at a press conference which served as a detailed curtain-raiser to the event at the Arts Council of Pakistan here on Thursday.

She also added that the festival on each day would close with a concert. Besides, there will be the Burnes Road food court on the Arts Council grounds to insure no one felt hungry. Another special feature of the festival is the names given to the halls where the programmes will be held over the two days. As a tribute to the people who have contributed so much for the country in literature, art and science there will be the ‘Hakim Said ki Baithak’, ‘Fahmida Riaz ki Baithak’, ‘Dr Hamida Khuhro ki Baithak’, ‘Abdus Salam Labs’, ‘Jamshed Nusserwanjee Mehta Courtyard’, ‘Anita Ghulam Ali Auditorium’ and ‘Sohail Rana Auditorium’.

‘We have a responsibility to introduce our children to books’

“CLF is ITA’s flagship programme started in 2011,” said Ms Jamil while giving some background to the festival. “Our education reports were showing us that learning levels of children were going down and that textbooks alone were not enough. So we started CLF for children between the ages of three to 18 along with their teachers and parents. The children are our VIPs and the grown-ups may accompany them though whenever we organise this festival it feels like we are revisiting our own childhood,” she said.

CLF has a nationwide footprint having completed 59 editions in all four provincial capitals and Islamabad and over 25 districts of the country, reaching over 1.4 million children and teachers since its inception in November 2011. It is a non-ticketed festival.

President of Arts Council Karachi Ahmed Shah said that the authors who used to write for children have become septuagenarians and octogenarians. “But children’s writers need to be compatible with the children of today who no longer look to their grandparents for advice as they have Google for that. Still,” he reminded, “information is not knowledge. Besides, you also find a lot of rubbish on the internet.”

Commissioner of Karachi Iftikhar Shallwani said that he was glad that CLF was being held in Karachi again. “I believe that it is the fifth time that this festival is being held in Karachi and I hope it will continue to be held here,” he said, adding that he wanted to help bring back the reading culture of the city. “There are 42 big or small libraries in Karachi but I want a big public library here like the public library in San Francisco where you can’t find room to sit. I wish the same for our libraries and such festivals are a great source in that direction,” he said.

Co-founder of CLF Ameena Saiyid said that the gist of the festival was raising curiosity in children, which leads to learning. “There will be music, theatre, workshops and what not here for the children to get involved in,” she said. “It is also provides a great opportunity for school field trips,” she added.

CLF director, co-curator and herself an author Rumana Husain said that they tried something new at every CLF. “This time we have 68 sessions for which some 160 resource persons are joining us. Many of these people are new to CLF like young authors and a five-year-old child prodigy who recites poetry and must be seen and heard,” she said.

Musician Ali Hamza said that there is a reading culture in successful nations of the world. “You see people reading on the London tube and we also have a responsibility to our children to introduce them to books,” he said.

Social activist and founder of Tehrik-i-Niswan Sheema Kermani said that she was glad to be with CLF from the start. She also said that things such as art, literature, theatre, poetry and dance make people better humans. “These things take you away from anger and intolerance as they open the mind,” she said.

Politician Mehtab Akbar Rashdi said that children needed to be introduced to things which could help them in their lives and CLF offered many such things. “Then you get an edge when the government also joins hands with you in such endeavours as organisations gain strength from government sponsorship,” she said.

The inaugural event of the festival will also have Sindh Minister for Education and Literacy Syed Sardar Shah.

Young 13-year-old author Zainab Rashid and Batool Nasir of Oxford University Press also spoke.

Published in Dawn, August 2nd, 2019