BELGIUM: A beach has been transformed into a huge sandy gallery for one of the world’s biggest sand sculpture festivals in Belgium. The giant gallery consists of superheroes, cartoon characters, and Cinderella’s castle which opens on Saturday and runs until September, providing rain does not wash away the exhibits. A team of 32 artists spent five weeks with 7,000 tons of sand creating the 150 works for the Ostend Sand Sculpture Festival. Many of the artists work in other fields, such as wood or marble carving, and said they found sand sculpting presented some challenges. One of the many artist, Sergey Zaplatn said, “What I like in the sand is that you must be very tactile while carving, I am also an ice carver and to compare with ice, the sand is very fragile.”