While the main Fairway Galle Literary Festival 2017 is bringing the Galle Fort area to life, the MAS Galle Children's Programme, has crafted a  two-day mini lit fest on Saturday, Jan 14 and Sunday Jan 15, at the Thomas Gall School, to once again offer a fun and engaging series of workshops for younger festival-goers. 

Tailoring programmes to three individual groups: ages 5 -7, 8 -11 and 12 -14 years, the 2017 Children's Festival is packed with big names from the Festival itself, showcasing a dazzling array of talents and specialities and ensuring a full experience of budding learners.

Kicking off with warm-up sessions by MAS Eco Go Beyond, the programme encompasses storyboarding, performance poetry, theatre, writing songs, drawing comics and even demystifying illusions and magic tricks, all of which is coupled with refreshment and lunch served during the breaks. 

Even these are teachable moments, with MAS Eco Go Beyond Workshops tapping these to create awareness amongst children about the need for sustainability in the packaging waste used for their own refreshments. 

The Children's Programme is all set to be a highly engaging weekend for children, especially due to a number of thrilling workshops being hosted by Jeeva Raghunath and India's most famous illusionist/mentalist Neel Madhav.

Jeeva’s workshops are highly interactive and based on time-tested storytelling ideas. They have also proven effective for varied groups and ages, with topics including storytelling techniques, story development, communication skills and developing language skills through stories.

Neel is a new-age illusionist and mentalist who combines magic with mentalism, neurolinguistic programming and criminology. Stemming from his passion to travel and challenge the stereotypes attached to the magical arts, he is the creator of the hugely popular travel-cum-street-magic show on NDTV Good Times, ‘You Got Magic with Neel Madhav’, which is now in its third year.

The Children's Programme in 2017 also features unique sessions such as “Creating a Comic Story” by German graphic designer and illustrator Reinhard Kleist, where he workshops the step by step development and illustration of a story of a beach-dwelling protagonist.

Another area to be discovered is Street Art, with Charles Uzzell Edwards being your able guide into this new medium. Offering workshops such as “Street Art Animals” and “Street Art Lettering”, each for a different age group, Charles explores the entire gamut of this new art form, from designing unique animal characters, and creating stencils so they can be used over and over again, to developing tags and bubble letters and learning how to master these different styles to express oneself in wholly unique ways.

Ramsay's “Songwriting Workshop” teaches children how to write a song with the twelve-bar blues, allowing them to express their creativity and rhyming, and singing talents all at once. 

Other exciting and interesting workshops include a number of Poetry Writing and Music sessions featuring Jemima Foxtrot, as well as programmes like the poetic “Mapping Our World for Memories with Malika Booker”, and “Punchy Performance Poetry with Luke Wright”, along with the art and writing workshop, “Knock, Knock Who's There with Anita Nair”.

Don't miss out, this programme is ticketed and prior bookings are required, visit www.galleliteraryfestival.com for the full programme and information on tickets and their availability.

Box office is now open. Tickets are available online @ www.mydeal.lk/fairway-glf-2017 or at their box offices.

Colombo

740, Galle Road, Bambalapitiya

Hotline number 0717 040011

Galle

25, Leyn Baan Street Galle Fort 

Hotline number 0717 020011

Open: Mon - Fri 9-6.30 pm, Sat 9-5 pm