Photo by Joyce Wolff

The Los Alamos Arts Council presents the annual Los Alamos Kite Festival this weekend at the Spirio Soccer Fields at Overlook Park in White Rock.

The festival has grown over the years and now includes several pre-festival kite-building workshops for kids at local schools and culminates in a three-day-long, activity-packed, festival weekend.

The kite-festival weekend kicked off Friday night with the start of the County’s Summer Concert Series and a night kite-flight demonstration. The main festival was held Saturday and today and includes music, food, kite-building workshops and lots of kite flying. Kite enthusiasts from all over the southwest fly their large, intricately shaped kites and hand-made flying works of art, demonstrate stunt-kite flying, and grace the fields with incredibly colorful banners.

Free kite-building workshops for kids are held until 2 p.m. today where children build and decorate simple kites with assistance from volunteers. Kids use both their craft and artistic skills to put literally hundreds of these kites up in the sky. For the six-and-under crowd, pre-built kites are available for decorating.

A kite hospital is staffed with kite medics to mend the inevitable broken and injured kites using sticks, duct tape, and ingenuity. For those who do not wish to build their own, a kite vendor is at the festival with a selection of ready-to-fly kites to purchase.

Everyone young at heart is invited. Bring a kite, build a kite, fly a kite, or just take in the artful scene.