Arts festival featured over 100 events
Print Edition
One hundred winners were awarded for their creative designs at a creativity competition on November 15, wrapping up the one-month-long 2013 Suzhou Creek Arts Festival hosted by Putuo, the latest edition of the annual celebration, consisted of more than 100 cultural events in the district.
The designers created works from everyday products, crafts and installations, and also submitted works of animation and comics.
Founded in 2007, the Suzhou Creek Arts Festival is also part of China Shanghai International Arts Festival and focuses on civil participation and community events.
The theme for this year’s festival was “Love Suzhou Creek, A New Putuo.”
The festival explores the history and the industrial culture of the creek as well as buildings and development in modern times.
On the morning of October 18, the opening ceremony started at Changfeng Park. An original choral piece composed for the city, “The Love of Suzhou Creek,” was performed at the show along with other programs that included jazz dance and a string trio with bamboo flute.
Unlike previous years, the 2013 festival wasn’t aiming to become a grand project with expensive productions, but to emphasize on the charm of the arts in a more natural way.
Putuo District mobilized the resources of museums, libraries and cinemas and organized a festival that not only provided a list of diverse events for residents to choose from, but also encouraged community engagement. Program handbooks were printed and distributed in advance, and the committee also produced an advertising trailer shown in the media.
As a cultural exchange platform, the Suzhou Creek Arts Festival hosted international events that included a children’s painting exhibition and artists from other countries visiting communities and neighborhoods.
Exhibitions and competitions on the national, city and district levels also attracted the public as well as raising the influence of projects with strong artistic components.
The Charm of Art section of the festival mainly consisted of artwork exhibitions, including painting, calligraphy, and clothing culture of the Yi ethnic people.
Woodblock print painting is important in Chinese art history. The figures and images are carved into wood and then transferred to paper. During the festival, 62 pieces by 15 masters were displayed at Liuhaisu Art Gallery in Putuo, and 15 pieces of the art were about Suzhou Creek.
The artists included Su Yansheng, Shen Youfu, Zhang Zihu, Wu Guoqiang, Zhou Guobin and Qiu Qiong. In addition to the exhibition, they also showed the audience the steps in creating the paintings and invited them to try.
To reach more people with the art of carved painting, plans also called on the collection to be sent on a tour of communities afterwards.
Another exhibition at Putuo Library presented over 190 painting and calligraphy works by academicians from the Chinese Academy of Science and Chinese Academy of Engineering.
People may be familiar with the accomplishments of Zhu Kezhen (also known as Coching Chu, 1890-1974), who was a meteorologist and geologist, or Su Buqing (1902-2003), who was a mathematician, but the festival showed a collection of artworks by the scientists.
The traditional Chinese painting on display at Liu Haisu Art Gallery was a highlight of the festival. For the past four years, the gallery has been hosting exhibitions with the theme of Suzhou Creek as part of the arts festival. This year, the presentation invited Chen Jialeng, Hu Zhenlang and 23 other renowned artists in Shanghai to create 25 pieces of art that reflected the changes in Suzhou Creek.
Letters from home are an important part of folk culture and China’s spiritual heritage. This year, the Suzhou Creek Arts Festival called for the public to write and submit letters to be edited, published and exhibited. The committee received over 3,000 letters, which were judged in both adult and youth categories.
Another section of the festival was dedicated to community activities. Neighborhoods hosted events that included fashion weeks, traditional opera fests and paper-cutting displays to bring art closer to the residents. The subdistricts also planned their own mini art festivals during the one-month celebration.
The creative design competition, which wrapped up the Suzhou Creek Arts Festival, lasted four months, and there were 1,947 submissions. The participants came from diverse backgrounds, from professionals to students to ordinary community residents. A total of 603 works and 439 designers entered the final, and the judging panel selected 100 winners.
It is also part of the year-long Shanghai Citizen Arts Festival.
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