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- Ελληνικά
I am very happy to be here with you tonight, at the final celebration and graduation ceremony of Strovolos Agia Marina Primary School.
I am here to enjoy with you the theatrical performance that you have prepared and to see the result of the implementation of part of the "Schools Ambassadors of Culture - Children Ambassadors of Culture" programme in your school and to receive the feedback that we need as the Ministry of State for Culture for the better planning of the programme.
In order to promote cultural awareness and expression as a transversal lifelong learning skill, the Ministry of State for Culture is planning the programme "Culture Ambassadors Schools - Culture Ambassadors Children", in the context of which children come into contact with their ancient, traditional and contemporary culture. Our aim is for cultural education to be part of the process of shaping their identity and cultivating their emotional intelligence.
As part of the programme, children visit cultural sites, come into contact with culture and its creators and express through the arts their views and feelings about how they exist and coexist, discovering and nurturing their talents.
We also aim to address critical value issues through the arts.
We also aim to manage critical value issues through the arts. Creators from different arts, as cultural ambassadors, work with schools and implement action projects that communicate with the wider community. The programme will officially launch its pilot in September 2024. Literature, theatre, cinema, music, dance, visual arts, archaeology and our intangible cultural heritage, as vehicles, will take children on a journey of self-awareness and coexistence to create a better world.
Tonight we will break the "glass cages" together and fill our lives with culture and meaningful values. We will discover ways to exist with dignity and coexist with respect. As Brecht so aptly said, "Art is not a mirror of reality but a hammer that reconstructs it."
We must become better through our culture. To acquire roots, to define our identity, who we are, and then to spread our wings, to discover our talents, in order to reconstruct our world and make it better.
I congratulate your Ambassador of Culture Ms. Christina Pavlidou for her constructive collaboration with the school's management and teachers, whom I thank for embracing and supporting the project. I would also like to thank Mrs Elena Pericleous, who since last September has taken on the role of Cultural Education Coordinator, helping us to implement an important part of President Christodoulides' Governance Programme. Ms Pericleous has designed the "Schools Cultural Ambassadors - Children Cultural Ambassadors" programme, for which we are working with the Ministry of Education, Sports and Youth and which, as I have already mentioned, we hope to launch in September. This would not have been possible without the contribution of your school, which accepted our invitation to pilot the programme and for that I would like to thank the school's management and teachers.
Finally, I would like to say a big "Bravo" to the children who will shine on stage tonight.I wish you all the best for your performance, my children, and I wish you all the best for the rest of your high school, where more beautiful journeys and experiences await you!
(EC/EP/MS)
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