KARACHI: This year’s annual Youth Festival organised by the Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi will be held from Sept 24 to Oct 1, announced the council’s Ahmed Shah at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon.

Mr Shah began his speech by thanking the media for promoting ‘non-commercial’ events. He said the youth festival was an annual feature of the council’s programmes, and like the Urdu Conference that it held every year the festival too had become big enough to be recognised. He said the event had provided a platform to hundreds of boys and girls to showcase their talent in different categories.

He said he was pleasantly surprised to see some of the young people who took part in the festival to become professionals in their respective fields. He said not only did the council give them a platform but it also helped them get jobs which enabled them to become productive members of society. He said one of the marked features of the festival was that young people belonging to a variety of social backgrounds and economic strata participated in it. He said regardless of winning or losing a competition, what the festival did was to instill the young ones with confidence, and confidence was something that helped them in the later stages of their lives.

Mr Shah said this year the council had increased the number of categories from six to 12, which included singing, acting, painting, photography and essay writing in English and Urdu. He said the festival would also have events for special children. He said Chief Minister of Sindh Syed Murad Ali Shah had consented to be the chief guest on the opening day of the event. He said singer Shahzad Roy would perform on the first day and the concert would be open to all.

Published in Dawn, September 21st, 2016