Festival of children's imagination

The space of the Ostrowiec Culture Brewery hosted the 1st Ostrowiec Festival of Creativity, organized by the District Branch of the Polish Red Cross in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski with the support of the city authorities and the Municipal Cultural Center. The festival is the culmination of a year's worth of preparation by pupils of  Ostrowiec schools. It summarized the 34the “Creative School” workshops, which were attended by 168 teachers and 336 students. The purpose of the workshops was to develop creativity and creative thinking, to train teamwork and effective communication, to develop the ability to present own work, as well as the work of the whole team, and to improve teachers' competence in innovation and creative teaching methods.

The event was attended by Deputy Mayor Artur Łakomiec on behalf of Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski Mayor Jarosław Górczyński.

- “It is impossible to point out the best performance here. All those who performed on stage today and participated in the workshop are winners. What is important is not what material things you won at this festival, but what you learned during the year of training, namely creativity and cooperation. The ability to work as a team is important from the perspective of the pandemic and isolation for our children. I offer my congratulations and thanks to the organizers, children, teachers and parents.” - said Deputy Mayor Artur Łakomiec.

During the festival, the stage of the multifunctional hall of the Ostrowiec Culture Brewery hosted 16 teams coming from 8 elementary schools – a total of 166 students from Ostrowiec elementary schools and 26 supervisors. Each team had to present scenes lasting 6 minutes, in which acting skills were not enough. Participants were tasked with preparing costumes and stage decorations on their own. In addition, each group was given a special surprise task, which required the youngsters' cooperation skills and creativity. The unlimited imagination of the pupils of the Ostrowiec elementary schools once again did not disappoint and the audience witnessed colorful and original performances.

The event was co-financed by the so-called Norwegian funds under the project “Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski - miasta OdNowa,” coordinated by Deputy Mayor of Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, Dominik Smolinski.

- “Classes were conducted primarily in creativity using equipment that we also managed to purchase last year. These included robots, sewing machines, and all sorts of gadgets to stimulate creativity in children and young people.”- noted Deputy Mayor Dominik Smolinski.

Beata Barska-Jagiello – coordinator of the event from the District Branch of the Polish Red Cross in Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski – also commented on the event:

-”The Ostrowiec Festival of Creativity” was a fantastic journey into the depths of children's imagination, a major event oriented towards creative solutions, the creation of innovative projects and the development of many different competencies among both students and teachers. Thanks to today's presentations, we were able to see that in Ostrowiec’s schools, in addition to the implementation of the core curriculum, teachers also take on other challenges and care about stimulating creative thinking and creativity as a 21st century competence, and place great emphasis on the independence of the young person. Even at first glance, it is clear that today's presentations are the results of many days of work by the entire team, rather than a one-time activity. The preparation of this project allowed the youths to integrate, come together as a team, and strengthened their belief that together they can achieve a lot.” - 

All “actors” were rewarded with gifts, while the winners of the first place as a prize will go on a trip to the Leonardo da Vinci Center in Podzamcze, and the second and third places will take part in the Pizzerman Junior workshops, which will be held at Góralska Bacówka. The school that won first place in two age groups (grades I-III and grades IV-VIII) turned out to be Public Elementary School No. 14.

“Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski - miasta OdNowa” (in English: “Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski – City ReNEWal”) benefits from a grant of EUR 2,974,766 received from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway under the EEA grants. The project aims to improve the lives of residents of all ages by achieving various changes in the city’s socio-economic development, and in the sphere of local public administration.