Organized by the Cultural Affairs Bureau (IC), the 25^th Macao Arts Festival (MAF) was held in May 2014, 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. 

  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.