Organised by the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC), the 25th Macao Arts Festival (MAF) has come to a close, following over a month of more than 30 acts and more than 200 performances, exhibitions, and outreach activities, including workshops and master classes, among many others. Well received by audiences from home and abroad, with ticket sales figures nearing 90%, the Festival counted with the support of the community, achieving great success.

For this edition, IC organised for the first time a press conference in Guangdong, establishing partnerships with local media outlets, such as a programme exchange with Music FM Radio Guangdong, the establishment of an official Macao Arts Festival Weibo account, etc, thereby introducing the Festival to a broader audience, promoting direct participation and exchanges with the public and heightening the event’s prestige in Mainland China. The MAF counted with the support of the Macao Government Tourist Office, TDM – Teledifusão de Macau, Air Macau and MGM Macau, all of which contributed to a variety of promotional activities and to widely advertise the Festival’s Silver Jubilee. Furthermore, in order to commemorate the Silver Jubilee, IC purposely planned and produced the “Macao Arts Festival Silver Jubilee Commemorative Documentary”, which allows viewers to revisit the Festival’s wonderful history and classical moments of the past and to witness the transformation of the MAF into one of the main cultural events of the region.

Themes ‘Impulse’, this year’s Festival continues to establish as goals the ‘promotion of local artistic development, the promotion of Chinese culture and the dissemination of the world’s outstanding creations’, giving audiences the chance to access a variety of outstanding productions from all over the globe while favouring and promoting the development of local arts. Local shows comprised more than half of the Festival’s programme, including the Macao Arts Festival Silver Jubilee Opening Concert and the MAF’s closing performance A Dream of Light. Produced and performed by local talents, both shows carried a special meaning. The opening concert took place at Tap Seac Square and was viewed by more than 1500 people, while A Dream of Light took place from May 31 to June 8, in a total of 17 performances, attracting thousands of spectators.

The MAF went a step further in promoting the arts within different communities and social groups, in order to nourish life through art, specially designing over 40 outreach activities, including master classes, workshops, seminars and post-show sharing sessions, among others, which attracted the participation of over 2000 people. The Festival, with the cooperation of the Social Welfare Bureau, also took underprivileged groups to watch three performances of the puppet show Special Creatures. In addition, the Macao Annual Visual Arts Exhibition 2014 – Western Media Category and the exhibition “Collotype • Recurrence, Spatial Convergence of John Thomson and Wong Ho Sang” were very well received and will run until mid and end of August, respectively.

　The Macao Arts Festival is an important annual cultural event. As such, ticket sales for a number of acts neared 90%, including: Venetians Want to Get a House, a play by Macao Experimental Theatre; contemporary dance show Revival; the concert Reminiscence of the Classics, by the Macao Chinese Orchestra; the patuá play Vivo na Únde?(Dream Home), by local drama group Dóci Papiaçam di Macau; Dancing to the Sound of Naamyam, a dance co-production by choreographer Mui Cheuk Yin, dancer Xing Liang and Naamyam master Au Kuan Cheong; Animare, by Shadow Play Theatre Kakashiza, from Japan; the concert Viva Mozart by local ensemble Macao Virtuosi; the play The Importance of Being Earnest by Singaporean company W!ld Rice; puppet show Special Creatures by Argentinean Roberto White; “Adapting for Distortion followed by Haptic” by Hiroaki Umeda; multimedia play by Canadian Robert Lepage The Andersen Project; the play Murder in San Jose by local group Theatre Farmers; the entertaining and enchanting play Imagine Toi, by French clown and mime artist Julien Cottereau; Beauty Fades from the Twelve Ladies’ Bower, by the Collective of Macao Cantonese Opera Artists; The Legend of Li Qingzhao, by the Foshan Cantonese Opera Troupe in cooperation with outstanding local talents; children’s play Rain of Stone, Song of the Sea by local group Step Out; the play Cloning Ecstasy by local Dirks Theatre Arts Association; and the play Eighteen Springs by Zuni Icosahedron from Hong Kong, among others. Due to high ticket demand, additional performances were organised for the shows Venetians Want to Get a House, Dancing to the Sound of Naamyam, Animare, The Importance of Being Earnest, Special Creatures, Murder in San Jose, Beauty Fades from the Twelve Ladies’ Bower, “Rain of Stone, Song of the Sea” and Eighteen Springs.