This year's festival is going GREEN.
The Kite Festival (Saturday, March 28, 10 am to 4 pm) will explore how being ‘green’ and utilizing natural resources can be a fun, creative, and fulfilling experience. What better way to celebrate our environment than by coloring the sky with kites fashioned from renewable resources and powered by the wind?
This year, honor planet Earth by creating both environmentally and thematically ‘green’ kites that positively reflect the beautiful resources we have available. In lieu of constructing with ‘green’ materials, you could create a traditional kite with a ‘green’ theme…The sky is literally the limit-so be creative and push the limits, have fun, and go ‘green’! Whatever you end up creating, please make sure that all kites fly according to AKA specifications.
This year, our activity tents focus on the idea of green and its many facets.
History of Kites
A beautiful display of kite’s history from all over world.
Island Kites
(WIAKA and TobagoFlyingColours)
A display and demonstration of using recycled materials to make kites.
Making kites with kids sponsored by the Drachen Foundation.
Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation
Color and create your own mini wind turbine- pinwheels.
National Cherry Blossom Festival
Join National Cherry Blossom Festival Ambassadors and the National Aquarium to create an item where sea and air meet: a fish windsock.
Embassy of Sweden
Living Green exhibit
We also have a number of special guests visiting us this year including kite flyers from Tobago, West Indies, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.
As always, the festival features three competitions. For those who build their own kites, you are invited to enter the Handmade Kite competition. Please click on “Festival Awards” to learn about our format for the handmade kite competition.
Teams may also enter into two additional heart-stopping events- the sixth annual Smithsonian Hot Tricks competition, and the always popular Rokkaku Kite battle will be both held at the end of the day. Watch kite flyers strut their stuff on the field dazzling the crowd with trick kite moves and thrilling competition. Registration Opens at 10 a.m.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Depending on wind and weather, this schedule is flexible.
* 10 a.m. - Opening Ceremony/Registration begins
* 10:15 a.m. - Kitemaker/Master Kitemaker Competition Begins
* 12 noon - KitemakerMaster Kitemaker Competition Breaks / Children’s Competition Begins
* 12:30 p.m. - Registration Ends
* 1 p.m. - Children’s Competition Ends / Children’s Award Ceremony / Kitemaker/Master Kitemaker Competition Resumes
* 2 p.m. - Competition is completed/Hot Tricks Showdown
* 3 p.m. - Rokkaku Challenge
Kitemaker/Master Kitemaker Awards Ceremony Begins
Take Metro to the Smithsonian station or take Metrobus routes 30, 32, 34, 35, and 36.
http://www.kitefestival.org/start.htm
