The Red Sea Artists Festival begins Saturday in Suez, Egypt, with groups from around the Arab world arriving to display their cultures in a variety of art forms. Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti, Yemen, Jordan, Palestine, Egypt and Saudi Arabia will all be represented at the four-day festival that boasts art and photography exhibitions, handicraft work and pottery displays, concerts and poetry readings. The idea of the event is to form cultural bonds between countries on the Red Sea, to preserve that mutual cultural identity and promote that folkloric heritage through crafts and song and popular verse and other arts,” said Abu Bakr Baqadir, Deputy Minister for International Cultural Relations. “The Kingdom will be represented in numerous works on the environment of the Red Sea through the Society of Culture and Artists in Jeddah and participants such as poet Fuwad Yanbu'awi,” Baqadir said. In Italy, meanwhile, the Ministry of Culture and Information is taking part in the Gulf Cultural Week along with representatives from the other GCC countries., due to begin Monday in the Italian capital Rome. Abdul Aziz Bin Salma, who is heading the ministry delegation, said the four-day event sought to “build bridges between the West and the Islamic World”, by addressing issues of concern to all parties involved, through symposiums and lectures on economic and trade cooperation between Italy and GCC countries, women's development in the Gulf, and others.
