The second Sigulda Children and Youth Literature Festival / Day will take place in September
This year the unifying theme of the festival will be nature, ecology and green lifestyles. The festival program is intended to be an inspiring set of events that will encourage both children and adults to reflect and talk, and possibly encourage small but significant changes in our daily lives to make a better world together.
The festival will take place for three days: September 26, the Festival School Day will take place, inviting students from Sigulda County, while on September 27 and 28, Family Days will take place, where visitors from all over Latvia will be welcomed by a wide program: meetings with book authors from Latvia, Ukraine and Iceland. There will be creative workshops, exhibitions, animated film screenings, discussions and lectures for parents and educators, readings of the authors’ unpublished works, presentations of the latest children’s books and various activities in the urban environment. Festival Family Days Sigulda Devona in the grass Radix There will also be a book market with the participation of Latvian book publishers who publish books for children.
The festival’s spine is made up of authors and illustration programs, but allowing children and young people to discover and experience how literary text transforms into other cultural areas, each festival is developed another special program, this time animation. The first Sigulda Children and Youth Literature Festival, which took place in 2023, was complemented by the authors’ and illustration programs by the theater and multimedia program.
This year, the festival’s creative team has three curators of programs: Alice Nigale, Member of the Board of the Latvian Book Publishers Association, artist, associate professor Ruta Briede, professor of the Latvian Arts Akdemia, and Sabine Anderson, Chairman of the Board of the Latvian Animation Association.
Programs are created by interacting so that events are interconnected, for example, the illustration program will have three exhibitions with a unifying name Peterson’s archipelagowhich will reflect the creative work of illustrator Reinis Petersons, while the animation program includes films to which Reinis Petersons was an artist. Similarly, meetings and classes with writers Agnes Vanags and Louise Pastors are included in the authors ‘program, but the animation program will feature films to create the motifs of these authors’ books.
A special event will also be a joint mosaic with Ukrainian author and artist Catherine Mikhalicin, an exhibition of illustrations of Lithuanian illustrations of the living classic Kestuša Kestais Casparch And meeting with Icelandic author Andris Snay Magnason, who focuses on ecology. The animated short film screening will also be special – it will be possible to watch movies that rarely move to viewers in Latvia. The screening will include films about people and nature interactions in different parts of the world – from the snowstorm in northern Canada to drought in the middle of Africa. A detailed festival program will be announced in early September. The festival’s news will find out the fastest following SBJLF accounts on social networks – Facebook and Instagramand on the festival’s website – www.siguldasfestivals.lv
Already in the spring, along with the opening of the outdoor reading room of Sigulda County Library, the SBJLF Book Cabinet was open Sigulda Devon in the lobby. In preparation for the festival, we invite you to get acquainted with the festival’s collection of books, reading them and reading the children in front of them.
Festival book list can be found www.siguldasfestivals.lv
