As talent and technique join hands at the 57th State School Arts Festival to be held from Monday in Kannur, the State will once again witness another edition of a carnival that has helped preserve art and culture of a land.
The festival has grown, over the last six decades, to become a sort of an example, be it in terms of quality or in its organisation. Called the largest of its kind in Asia, about 12,000 schoolchildren compete at the festival on 20 stages in 232 events that include distinctly different art forms of music, dance and theatre.
One will also struggle to find another cultural festival in which more than 20,000 people are provided lunch in a big hall each day for a week and that too, with order and precision. And it is also unlikely that you could think of another arts festival which is run mainly by more than 5,000 teachers. Around 1,200 journalists cover the event.
Whichever way you look at it, the school arts festival stands out. It is something Kerala can be proud of. Nobody would have imagined that it would become this big – not even C.S. Venkiteswaran, the Director of Public Instruction who conceived and organised the first festival in 1957, at the Government Girls’ High School, Ernakulam. In that festival, there were just 18 events and 400 students.
The 1965 edition of the festival had cost about ₹10,000. The budget this time is ₹2.10 crore. The festival has produced some of the finest artists Kerala has seen. Singers Yesudas, P. Jayachandran, Chithra, Sujatha, Minmini, Arundhathi, Venugopal, Binny Krishnakumar and Najeem Arshad, actors Manju Warrier, Vineeth, Navya Nair, Vineeth Sreenivasan, Vinduja Menon, Vineeth Kumar, Krishnachandran and Idavela Babu, composers M. Jayachandran and Sharath, and dancer Neena Prasad are only some of the talents that blossomed at the festival. We sure will see more stars rising here too.
But it is not just the talented children or the dedicated teachers that have made the festival what it is. The crowds of art lovers also have played their part. Scenes of at least 20,000 people sitting through a Bharatanatyam or Mohiniyattam performance well past midnight could only be seen here.
Other art forms, such as Oppana, Thiruvathirakali, Margamkali, Kathakali, classical, light, folk and instrumental music, drama, mono-act, Ottan Thullal and Kathaprasangam too attract large audiences.
The festival offers a rich platter for art lovers to choose from.
