Ninety young Saudi women are participating in the Riyadh Women's Festival 2010, an event that offers women the opportunity to showcase the crafts that they produce at home. Riyadh Mayor Prince Abdulaziz Miqrin Al-Ayyaf, opened the festival under the banner of ‘Ambition – Idea – Trade' near the Prince Sultan University campus in Riyadh. The event which will close on Friday is open from 9A.M. to 12 noon and 4 P.M. to 10 P.M. The morning session is usually reserved for invited guests from the public sector and for visits from school and university students. Dr. Laila Al-Hilali, Supervisor-General of the Riyadh Municipality Women's Unit, the organizer of the festival, said the event would serve as a platform for young Saudi women to display their work to the public, which in turn would help them to produce their crafts on a commercial basis. “There are 90 young women taking part in the festival,” Al-Hilali said. “If 50 of them manage to turn their ideas and products into successful fully women-only projects, that will create a huge number of job opportunities for women.” Booths at the festival are designated based on the types of products they display, including items such as handicrafts, dresses, cloaks and veils, plastic art and photography, home décor, traditional tents, jewelry and other accessories. There is also a booth for children. “The first Riyadh festival organized exclusively for Saudi women artisans is aimed at supporting young educated Saudi women by giving them a chance to display their creativity and by encouraging them to produce goods on a commercial level,” Al-Hilali said. She said the participating Saudi women, some of whom already run small businesses, have come from various educational backgrounds and hold degrees in higher education. The individual artisans are displaying their handiwork in 66 booths set up in the festival, along with 13 different charity organizations and institutions which are participating in the event. Al-Hilali said that the Women's Unit of Riyadh Municipality is planning to organize similar events in the future in an effort to motivate and build relationships that promote creativity and prosperity in society. She said the budget allocation for organizing such a festival was relatively high. However, the municipality has not charged the participants a fee. “In fact we invite businesswomen to come forward and to help organize future events and promote investment projects for young Saudi women,” she said. “Moreover we want to act as a catalyst by helping budding young Saudi women artisans make products that will enable them to compete in local and international markets,” she added. She said the festival will even encourage visitors to become inventors and to initiate licensed business ventures and women's establishments that will create job opportunities for Saudi women. “We are trying to inspire young Saudi women with a legal and social framewaork which will insure their independence and provide them with a source of income,” she said. Meanwhile, there have been reports that the festival has prompted criticisms from participants concerned at the playing of classical music, the uniforms of organizers, and the presence of mobile telephones with cameras. According to a report in Al-Watan Arabic daily on Monday, attendees were concerned at the “revealing” clothes of staff employed at the festival, and despite organizers' protestations that the festival is an entirely women-only event, the uniform was changed. Dr. Al-Hilali, the festival organizer, said that no “participants, organizers or visitors were wearing “short clothing”. “The clothes that have been worn at the festival are the same as those worn at home in front of the family and they are not revealing,” Al-Hilali told Al-Watan. Plans to “provide atmosphere” by playing music at several junctures of the event were also changed due to complaints following the opening ceremony when classical music was played. According to Al-Hilali, the same piece of music had been played at the Janadriya Festival of National Heritage. “It was just a short piece played at the opening of the festival by way of celebration,” Al-Hilali said. “No more music has been played over the rest of the week.” The following days of the festival reportedly then passed without complaint following the organizers' responses, only to return anew when it was noted that many women in attendance were keeping their veils on due to the “presence of mobile telephone cameras”. “There's no way we can ban visitors from bringing in their mobile phones,” said Al-Hilali. “The organizing committee has banned the taking of photos of people present, and we've put up warning signs to that effect. Mobile telephones are everywhere, we can't protect everyone.”
