Dubai: Global Village, Dubai’s multi-cultural festival park, recently hosted the awards ceremony for winners of its Victory Project, a community initiative designed to instill patriotism among UAE students.
The project registered the participation of 15,000 students from 111 schools. They were challenged to creatively decorate and colour ceramic sculptures shaped as the three-fingered UAE victory salute. More than 3,000 sculptures were submitted.
At the ceremony, Ahmad Al Marri, director of operations at Global Village, presented the awards to students of the winning schools.
Gems Winchester School came first, Asma Bint Al Nouman school was second and Al Hegra School third. The three winning works received a prize of Dh100,000, awarded to the schools for the development of the arts department.
Students who created the 10 most beautiful templates also received a collection of Global Village Memorial Gifts. All students participating in the initiative were presented with certificates of appreciation in addition to a ticket to the park.
Shazia Rahman, head of department of Art at GEMS Winchester School, said: “This is our second year to participate in Global Village community initiatives. We participated with more than 600 students from the age of three to nine years in Victory Project, where we had over 290 sculptures painted. It was a pleasure to see students coming up with such creative pieces of arts and we look forward to take place in future initiatives of Global Village.”
Global Village launched the Victory Project community initiative in October 2017 to involve school students and showcase their artistic talents. The initiative asked students for their artistic and creative expression on ceramic tiles designed in the form of the UAE’s victory salute. Each sculpture was created by a group of five students in ways and colours inspired by the values of the National Day.
Al Marri said: “We are very pleased with the response and involvement from schools and students from across the UAE. This community initiative brought out the artistic talent of students and we are impressed with their creativity. Global Village always strive to host such initiatives meant to engage with different communities in the UAE and especially the future generations. Our current season sees a number of community driven initiatives with the introduction of the highly successful Talent Stage and our community outreach programs that takes Global Village outside its geographical boundaries and spread happiness around UAE.”
