National Arts Festival

United Arab Emirates21 March 1988Draft

The Department of Culture and Information of Sharjah Government took the initiative in March 1984 to organise an annual festival aimed at the rebirth of genuine heritage and in continuation of values and traditions that are part of the cultural, material and spiritual entity of the Arab National of the Emirates. The National Arts Festival focussed on themes that deepen and solidify unity, the one destiny and common aspirations not only of the small Emirates nation but all the vast Arab and Islamic World, in belief that these values and traditions are factors of unity not divisiveness and weakness. Major aspects of the National Arts Festival: Plastic Arts, folk arts, theatrical arts, folk culture, material or moral in its varied and numerous spoken forms as well as its material forms as crafts, and folk industries to present and infuse it into the present life that underwent drastic changes. This confirms the necessity for the repeated call to hold this festival to present the nature and constituents of our identity. It confirms too the value of heritage infused into present life. Thus great attention was focussed on the preservation of the Arabic and Islamic genuine heritage in architecture, traditional folk dances, Crafts, industries, songs and folk poems.