On Saturday NICH hosted its 10th annual Street Art Fest in downtown Belize City. The event featured a multitude of artists creating in real time, in a public space to offer visitors a kind of sensory buffet of all the flavours of Belize's creative cornucopia. Cherisse Halsall spent the afternoon soaking it all in and here's is her story.
On Saturday "the Alberts" was alive with colour and vibrancy for the 10th annual street art Festival.
There was all kinds of art as far as the eye could see, and by noon even the Channel 7 studio was getting a makeover.
The festival is about art but also about creatives getting to share with the community. To create, curate, and showcase in a public space where the masses are the muse.00:13
One such artist is Raquel-Art who late last year decided to give her all to her career as a painter.
Raquel Rodriguez - Painter "I was born a painter, I have always been painting on my life maybe to explain a little bit more, I've always painted but I've never actually gone for my art, I never actually put my whole self into it, like give up the day job and just be an artist and did that last year October. An artist told me last week that Raquel you should have a big collection of art for whenever you have events you can just take then out there but I'm a little bit different, I think that for every event or fest that I've been doing so far, I have been going sleepless nights for about 2 weeks to a month just to prepare for that event. So a lot of pieces are only for the art fest today. So today what inspired me was the word street art, so street art made me think of being myself. I'm able to throw whatever colours I want together, doing the chalk or doing the spray paint, everybody is just doing their own things, being who they are. So I went ahead and I did everything that I liked and it worked, people like it."
And in addition to art there was culture. The Carillo family is in the process of establishing a maya museum where they plan to share the history, art, agriculture, dress, and even traditional foods of their Mayan heritage.
Hugo Carillo "We are a small Maya museum in the village of San Lazaro Orange Walk district and today what we are doing we are asking for sponsors but we are also sharing our culture for example the drinks, the different religious beliefs. So right here what you see we are doing an exhibit about the chaya with the hicada so we're serving the hicada as a nutritious drink. It's very nutritious and this will be one of the drinks that we're pushing for our museum."
Event organizer, Karen Vernon spoke to us in front of a mural made possible by cooperation with the Mexican Cultural Institute and she told us what else was in store at the Street art festival.
Karen Vernon - Organizer, Street Art Festival "It's our 10th year so we're celebrating 10 years and we're also an award-winning festival. We won BTB's festival of the year last year so we tried this year to bring back some of the artists and entertainment that we've had in the past. So that you know we can look back and see how they have grown. I'm always excited to see the jewellery but the paintings are always a crowd-pleaser. You know people love that and they love to see live art. So we try to do as much as possible."
There's also the kid's zone, of course, we have the artists booths along Albert street. There is the food court and the sidewalk Chalk competition
Every year you see new artists you see established artists, you see upcoming artists and the Belizean public gets an opportunity to appreciate what we have to offer.02:03
And how did that mural in our studio come out? Well you can pass by ahead of your next walk down Albert Street and see for yourself, some of the colour and the vibrancy left from 2020's street art festival.
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