KwB Nurtures Children’s Creative Writing Skills at the 8th Edition of SCRF

Children attending the eighth edition of Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival (SCRF) have enjoyed putting their creative talents to the test at a series of Knowledge without Borders (KwB) activities. The Sharjah-based cultural project has a major presence at the region’s leading literary festival for young people, which runs until April 30 at Expo Centre Sharjah. 

KwB’s corner at SCRF 2016 has been hosting a series of interactive and entertaining workshops, as well as multiple reading sessions, which aim to promote reading among citizens in Sharjah and the UAE. The seminars have been designed to strengthen individuals’ ties to literature and to promote the book as a valuable source of both knowledge and entertainment. 

Bedoor Ibrahim Mohammed Al Muaili, an acclaimed creative writing trainer and author of a number of children’s books, hosted two of the workshops taking place at the KwB corner. The first tackled an illustrated story titled ‘Pirate Badran,’ in which she posed questions to the children attending and gave prizes to those answering correctly. The second workshop was themed ‘Write your Story with a Narrator,’ where she presented a mixture of intertwined sounds and asked the youngsters to identify them. She then gave a set of exercises that motivated them to use their five senses while writing by describing visual scenes, sounds and smells and incorporating them into their stories. Another component of the second workshop saw her showing the children a collection of pictures and asking them to employ their imagination to depict the narrative of the story and to describe their personal feelings and emotions as they looked at the images. 

“My participation at KwB’s corner during the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival aimed to promote creative writing and the art of storytelling among children by teaching youngsters how to alert their senses and employ them in stories. These workshops are held in line with the festival’s vision and goals which seek to build a creative and innovative generation. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the children at the workshops and was very impressed with their enthusiasm and creativity,” said Bedoor Al Muaili.

KwB’s workshops ended with the distribution of ‘Junior Author’ contest booklets. The competition for children has been divided into two parts, writing and drawing, in order to encourage children to create stories. The project also made draws of winning stories of children taking part at the festival and gave away a number of prizes. The close of the KwB’s workshop programme capped an array of activities that had taken place at KwB’s corner, which included reading sessions conducted in collaboration with the Health Promotion Corporate, an initiative from the Supreme Council for Family Affairs, which aimed to instill a love of literature within young visitors to the festival.

KwB was launched as an initiative by His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Sharjah and is supervised and supported by Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi, Head of the Organising Committee of KwB. The project aims to establish reading as a noble habit in every household in the UAE. It encourages the establishment of home libraries and aspires to supply these libraries with the best reading material across a variety of genres suitable for all the family.