Festival Mood in Cartagena of the Indies

Cartagena of the Indies is a large beach resort city on the northern coast of Colombia. What makes this city stand out more is its giving importance to culture and literature that a traditional festival which is known as Hay Festival has become a major event in the country even in Latin America. Hay Festivals are held in several places like Segovia in Spain or Xalapa, Mexico throughout the year.
Hay Festival Cartagena celebrates its seventh anniversary on 26-29 January this year. Like every year, artists and thinkers share their ideas and help the participants to enrich their worlds.
Hay Festival Cartagena promotes culture and social responsibility. Many topics are selected in various areas like literature, cinema, music, geopolitics, journalism and the environment. After six years, the festival has become one of the most important cultural event in the world. The participants can have access to inclusive events with international artists. It is a significant event to gather important figures such as Mexican actor Diego Luna, Brazilian author Nélida Piñon, Cervantes award winner Mexican author Carlos Fuentes, and composer of the several Hollywood films Michael Nyman and so on...
The festival also give special importance on social responsibility and education. Therefore a few projects related to literacy and education take place in the programme and also twenty per cent of the tickets are free to students. Ongoing literacy and reading programmes; together with partners such as PLAN International, Alcaldia de Cartagena, RCN Radio-Television, Hay Festivalito, Punto de Partida, and Concurso de Cuentos RCN-Ministerio...

National Short Story Competition
This short story competition is an initiative to encourage learning and the promotion of creative writing and reading to students and teachers in Colombia.
It has been organized for four years and up to now 155 million stories have been received varied from the high school students to university level, the teachers and heads of subjects in state or private institutions from all over the country. Multimedia tools such as blogs, forums or news feeds has been used to promote the competition.
Beyond the excitement of the competition, the teachers from all over the country get a chance to have a visit from the acknowledged writers and pioneers of literary workshops who will give useful tips on reading and instructional techniques to them so as to realise the elements of creative writing. From the very first day it began, Hay Festival has invited the international writers to participate in the judgement committee to encourage the amateurs and the literary lovers. The Festival has also hosted the announcements of the winning stories and the awarding of the prizes.

Punto De Partida
Another project that has been held focusing on children and to improve their reading and writing skills which is called Punto de Partida.
Punto de Partida is a project designed to train teachers in techniques of student development, using a systematic method to teach the skills needed to read and write. The project consists of an eight-hour workshop for teachers, providing teaching material, and following and evaluating the development of the teachers. Seven schools, with 2,640 children, located in areas in which PLAN works, will benefit from the project. So that the project aims to achieve to build a continental dialogue gathering so many people together and open their ideas to one another through literature.

At this cultural festivity, people at various ages and from different places could talk about figures and incidents, learn something new and make a difference in their lives.