FLORIDA PUBLIC UTILITIES KIDS AREA
Friday 10/29
Little Angels
Little Angels is a family-friendly event acknowledging and celebrating deceased loved ones from the perspective of the child. Children participate in art activities such as wing-making and decorating, face painting, sugar skull decorating, story telling, and theater. Finale workshops are offered so that the children can participate in their own Procession/Finale-Spectacle. Angels on stilts lead the children on a procession around the Downtown public square to the finale stage area, where artists present a live performance-spectacle.
Saturday 10/30
Spooktacular Storytelling
Trick or Treat on the Street
Dance lessons with Downtown Dance
Face Painting
Halloween games & Surprises
Detailed info coming soon!
PARENTS PLEASE READ!
The all-inclusive nature of the parade, combined with the creativity Halloween inspires, results in an event like no other in South Florida. Part holiday celebration, part artistic revel, part cabaret, part platform for free speech, it conjures an alchemy that has confounded some who wish it was geared just toward children.
However, the Soul Parade is for everyone who would enjoy it. The entire community is invited. There is no jurying process to weed out potentially offensive costumes. What can offend one, can wildly amuse another, so such an enterprise is futile.
As with movies, books and events of all kinds, it is the parents’ responsibility to, well, parent. They know their children. They know their comfort level. They know what delights and frightens them. Like animated programs, not all parades suit all kids.
The two day event aims to be family friendly. We also want to get the word out that the parade is “PG.” The “P” isn’t for the participants, the politicians or the parade organizers. The guidance the rating refers to is from parents.
We hope parents will prepare their children, and, if needed help them with perspective – teach them to see the wonder, instead of the terror, in a cardboard box transformed into a giant puppet. Or to appreciate the simple wisp of imagination it takes to turn a sheet into a ghost. Let children know it’s OK to be bothered or scared by a costume and that they are safe with their parents. Reinforce that the parade is a chain dance of costumes, make-believe and people who aren’t all alike. A child with a highly developed sense of fantasy will not have difficulty relating to that scene. If kids are sensitive or easily scared, bring them when they are older.
Off color costumes may showup at the parade. Some parents may balk. Other parents may tell their children that was part of the culture in some countries, and not make big deal of it -- their kids see more skin on a daily basis at the beach. Often kids gauge their reactions on their parents’.
Showing tolerance teaches tolerance.
In difficult times, parents have the option to teach a child how to cope or to shield him or her from the situation. Either way, potentially traumatic moments can be transformed by a parent who reacts with a calming sense of grace, sensitivity and awareness.
If you take a young child to the parade, it can be a risk. It can be a growing opportunity. It can be a night of magic and wonder. The outcome does not depend on all parade participants dressing with children in mind. It depends on the decisions their parents make.
- The Halloween Street Scene Staff
