By Annette Chrysostomou
THIS year, Nicosia’s pop-up art festival is concentrated in the City Plaza shopping centre on Makarios Avenue instead of utilising vacant shops on the street as in previous years, in order to create a community atmosphere, the organisers said.
The Nicosia Municipality organising this festival for the third year running. Starting from Friday, for six weeks, new artists, designers, creative people, entrepreneurs and others show their new ideas and their work in the centre of Nicosia. “The aim of this year’s festival is not only the revival of Makarios Avenue, but also to promote new creative talents,” the municipality said in an announcement.
“By choosing the City Plaza”, curator of the festival Xenios Symeonides explained, “we are trying to create a community centre, a creative cell. Last year, there were some gaps between the shops, this year we have gathered everybody together.”
The curator sees the event as an opportunity to display the talent of which there is a lot in Cyprus. “A lot of talent is just buried under the crisis. This is a way to bring it out in the open,” he said. It is also a way for the talented people to meet each other. “As a result of last year, participants have become friends and now they collaborate with each other.”
Nicosia municipality has awarded shop space to 40 out of more than 70 applicants for this year’s festival. The available space in the shopping centre is limited, Symeonides said. The municipality supports the use of 23 shops in the basement, on the ground floor and on the first floor.
“The major objective is to support innovation, trade, art and education,” Yiannis Toumazis, director of the municipal arts centre NiMAC told the Cyprus Mail.
The event is being organised in association with the Pierides Foundation with the participation of the Cyprus Theatre Organisation (THOC), the Press and Information Office and the Bank of Cyprus Cultural Foundation.
As last year, the festival will be accompanied by a range of parallel activities – educational, cultural and recreational. Different bands will provide a musical background every day. Children will have the chance to listen to fairytales every Saturday from next week twice daily, an activity organised by the BCCF, in addition to a variety of other activities for children. The PIO is contributing a historical photographic exhibition and THOC will stage several performances.
The shops range from clothes to jewellery, handicraft and furniture. On the first floor, Panayiotis uses the frames of old armchairs to create new armchairs by covering them with material of his own design.
“About 90 per cent of last year’s participants have applied again,” the curator said, adding “but we have to give the opportunity to new talent, so 90 per cent are newcomers.”
“As a result of last year,” Symeonides continued, “some new shops have opened. Of course we hope that the pop-up festival will not be needed and the shops will be used all year round.”
