H.C. Andersen Games - Creating magic tales through arts and technology

Each year, H.C. Andersen Festivals, in collaboration with our good partners in China, GIFT Education, holds a competition for Chinese and Danish school children. The children are competing in interpreting H.C. Andersen's fairytales based on different themes. The themes are defined from year to year, and the children can use a lot of different creative materials such as bricks, paper, colors, but also mechanics and technology.

This year's theme is "Human and nature in balance" and the following three fairytales have been selected as inspiration for the competition:

• The little Mermaid
• The Nightingale
• The ugly Duckling

The competition was recently launched online in China. More than 100 Chinese teachers, local educational administrators and other interested parties participated. From Denmark the CEO for H.C. Andersen Festivals, Peter Bøgholm, attended the online launch with an introductory welcome, and Professor Emeritus from the H.C. Andersen Center at University of Southern Denmark, Johs. Nørregaard Frandsen participated with a presentation about the reasons behind the choice of this year's theme and the highlighted fairytales.

This year’s H.C. Andersen Games is expanded into three categories so even more children can participate:

• Creative Building Games: participants could use building blocks to transform their ideas into a 3D model with coding functions.
• Creative Painting Games: Art Advisor Ms. Guan Ziyin (关子音女士) and Ms. Hou Yuyao (侯钰瑶女士) have designed the rules for 4-12 years old children to paint their ideas on paper. The participants would pick one of the three fairytales to create.
• Creative Writing Games: the participants would interpret the fairytales by handwriting in their own language on paper in order to share their stories.

We are looking very much forward to see the many creative and adventurous interpretations of H.C. Andersen's eternally current universe from the many talented school children.