Budding Artists

When I wrote a month or so ago about visiting the sculpture exhibition in Cimenlik Castle I really didn't imagine the next exhibition there would be my daughters! We got a phone call last week to invite us to the opening of the Cocuklar Evi Troy Project in the Muavenet-i Milliye Exhibition Hall in the castle grounds. The mayor strolled around a walking tour of Canakkale opening exhibitions as he went.The Troy Festival in Canakkale this year is mainly centred on several exhibitions like this in various locations around town. Previous years involved a lot of folk dancing from Eastern Europe but a reduction in funding meant that there isn't so much dancing at the crossroads this year.

For the last year the whole preschool has been involved in this project, learning about Troy and its myths. The story was watered down a little, the gods were sidelined, the violence reduced and the sex left out completely. We had to read a book where the site as it is was explained from the point of view of two hedgehogs. Then we visited Troy with the author. The trip mainly involved a huge queue to get into the reconstructed horse by the gate and some of the outspoken kids told the story from the stage of the theatre. Then we sat, ate our lunch and the kids drew pictures. Back at the school they constructed a horse from their artwork and drew or constructed lots of little projects to do with Troy. The end-of-year show was a play of the story by the 5/6 year olds, with the 4/5 year olds on darbuka and the 3/4 year olds with bells on their wrists, held in the Korfmann Library downtown.