Vancouver kids get "magical" treat in annual fest

If there is one week marked on the calendar each year of Vancouver parents looking for inspiration, it's the week of the Vancouver International Children's Festival. This week, the festival ramped up for another year of magical performances for Vancouver children, and children at heart.

A staple in the Vancouver arts and culture scene, the Vancouver International Children's Festival has been running since 1978, bringing some of the world's renowned and innovative theater, music, and circus performers together for a magical week dedicated entirely to children.

The mission of the festival is to "provide the finest quality performing arts programs to young people in an environment that encourages critical thinking and a lifelong interest in learning, ideas and cultural exploration."

It brings performers from around the world, exposing children to not only different cultures, but also new ways of thinking about the arts. Each year the festival sees about 50,000 spectators, and over the years, the figure has reached 1.6 million with its magic.

"The arts are one of the greatest ways to get children thinking creatively about things and look for strategies and those sorts of things, and the arts have just a wonderful way of engaging people," said Ellie O' Day, Vancouver International Children's Festival media spokesperson.

"It's been shown, for instance with music that actually the brain changes when you're taught music, that it really creates new synapses that weren't there before, and so those kinds of activities are just so essential for a child to grow up," she said.

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