Cheers echoed through the Bliss Centre this morning as Belize District students braved the spotlight for the annual Festival of the Arts.
As many as 45 items were presented for the judges, varying from song and dance to poetry and drama. Jomarie Lanza was there:
However you choose to conquer the stage at the Bliss, be it dance, or even a bit of drama, when the festival of arts rolls around each year that's when we really get a chance to see the talent that lies within every school, where the kids spend months preparing their pupils for the spotlight. This year they started off strong with the secondary institutions and they did not hold back their energy at all this morning.
Kim Vasquez, Director of ICA
"This is the start of festival of arts 2026 starting today with the Belize district secondary festival of arts underway. They have an impressive amount of entries I believe over 45, close to 45 entries so today will be a full showcase morning and afternoon and we are just always so appreciative of the partnership between ICA NICH and the ministry of education and also the work of the teachers because they are the ones really working especially at the secondary level where students tend to have more of an involvement in what they bring to the stage in their own submissions but they still get that support from their teachers from their schools that is so sensual to keeping the festival of arts alive."
They show and judges will be moving from district to district, picking the best performances to complete their grand and final showcase. Kim Vasquez director of the institute of creative arts says that it's a golden showcase you won't want to miss.
Kim Vasquez, Director of ICA
"So what is going to happen is that we go at the district level so right now these are the district festival of arts that are happening and we are going to work our way through secondary, tomorrow we will be in Cayo and so forth and so forth and then we have as I said in May, early May we have the primary school festival of arts, the pre school festival of arts at the end of all of that we are looking at having a really compact and dynamic national golden showcase this year, we have some things in the pipeline that we are shaking up, one of the things we want to do this year is put the return of the district level golden showcases in the evenings. This is significant because we have been doing consultations across the country and one of the things that would frequently come up would be communities telling us why did we lose this feature because each district will have its own golden showcase and it would be an evening event where parents, students and the communities could come out and support so we are hoping to have this return this year starting for the primary and the preschool festival of arts and then we would advance here with a national golden showcase once that is complete."
Jomarie Lanza
The preschool Festival will be held in a few months.
