Homepage » About the exhibition » ICEFA Lidice Traveling Exhibition » Latvia, Riga, City Hall - 15. - 30. 11. 2012 – Selection of the 40th ICEFA

Latvia, Riga, City Hall - 15. - 30. 11. 2012 – Selection of the 40th ICEFA

14. 1. 2013

On 15 November 2012, the Embassy in Riga organized a ceremony at Riga city hall at which Ambassador Pavol Šepeľák handed 72 certificates and 11 medals over to Latvian winners of the 40th ICEFA LIDICE 2012.

The ceremony took place in the presence of representatives of the Latvian partner institutions. Preceding the ceremony was the opening of the 40th International Children's Exhibition of Fine Arts LIDICE 2012, featuring a selection of this year's winning entries coming from 63 countries of the world. Also the curator of the exhibition Ivona Kasalická participated in the preparation and the opening of the event. Before the ceremony, the guests could watch a documentary ICEFA Lidice, which has been produced by the Lidice Memorial; the event concluded with a projection of the fairytale film “How to wake up a princess”.

Latvia has been participating in the competition for twelve years now. This year's competition had 773 Latvian entries from 128 schools and children's centres, covering all art categories. Note that 212 entries have been selected out of over 1,500 by the panel of judges in the local sub-competition; the other entries have been sent in directly by individual schools. Before being sent in to the main competition, the selected entries were on display in the foyer of Riga city hall along with the exhibition “Jiří Trnka – In Service of Imagination”. The makers of these works of art received honourable mentions for their participation from the Latvian party; for the sixth time, the Embassy in Riga awarded the Sympathy Prize. The international panel of judges, including two representatives of Latvian institutions, Ilze Rimicáne from the hobby centre Daugmale and Areta Raudzepa from the National Educational Centre, selected 86 entries for recognition, which were able to assert themselves among 26,000 entries from 67 countries. Among the winners there were 57 children from 23 regional schools and 29 children from 14 Riga schools.

Under the co-operation with the Lidice Memorial, the Latvian public can get acquainted with creative works by children from all over the world this year. According to the tradition and with the assistance of the Riga city council, the exhibition was opened in the foyer of the Riga city hall. Children, their teachers and their parents watched a documentary on the 38th ICEFA Lidice before the ceremony. Then speeches followed of the ambassador of the Czech Republic to Latvia, the curator of the exhibition and our Latvian partners (National Centre for Education at the Ministry of Education, department of education, youth and sports of the Riga municipality and Riga Methodical Centre for Leisure Education), thanks to which we have been able to make this exhibition so popular in Latvia. The adjacent conference room saw Ambassador P. Šepeľák and Curator I. Kasalická present the children with their prizes and some keepsakes provided by the Embassy in Riga and the Lidice Memorial. After small refreshments, the event concluded with the showing of the successful Czech fairytale film How to Wake up a Princess, which once more brought to the minds of the guests the theme of this year's exhibition: The Theatre - The Puppet - The Fairytale.

The International Children's Exhibition of Fine Arts has visited Riga for the second time. For the first time, its 30th edition was displayed n the largest leisure centre in Riga, Skolénu pils (Pupil's house) in 2002. After Riga, the present exhibition will be on loan to the Latvian city of Rézekne because, for one thing, pupils of Rézekne Children's Leisure Centre participate very actively in the Lidice competition every year, for another thing, there is the village of Audrini not far from Rézekne, which suffered a similar fate to that of the Czech village of Lidice in the WWII. We have successfully co-operated with these cities for many years and since 2010 it has been holding true also for the Lidice Memorial and the village of Lidice. Then the exhibition will travel to the neighbouring Lithuania.

In the eleven years Latvia has participated in this competition, including this edition, we have given as many as 537 certificates and 91 medals to Latvian children. The high number of the prizes won every year proves not only the quality of the submitted entries but also the popularity of this competition in Latvia. Thanks to a significant support from our Latvian partners we can see that the competition known to every Latvian school is getting more and more attention of the Latvian public as well as some other institutions. It should be noted that this largest international art exhibition in the world is a Czech mark of quality, which enjoys an enormous prestige, for which great credit goes to its curator because of her tireless and invaluable work. She again demonstrated a highly professional approach here in Riga.

Mgr. Bc. Michal Korecký, Halina Lapiņa