DYC Culture & Arts Blogs
DYC’s Culture & Arts Division (in my Queen Show host voice)
We know we have an “about us” section, but we felt it best to break it all down here in layman’s terms, because well, that’s what a blog is about, making it just a bit more personal. So, here we go!
The Department of Youth and Culture has two (2) divisions, the Youth Affairs Division and the Culture & Arts Division; I think they are pretty self-explanatory but what we do isn’t so “black and white”. So, welcome to the introductory segment of the show! We don’t have a swimsuit segment, but our talents will be showcased in our blog posts, and we can’t wait to show our costume and evening wear segments – just remember that this is a year long show!
Under the Culture & Arts Division we have a few mandates that we follow, which are explained in our Culture Policy . The general idea is that we nurture cultural and creative identity and diversity; assist in national cultural and creative development; and of course promote and preserve all of the above.
‘Okay cool…but uhm, what exactly is culture?’
Yup, we do get that question quite a bit, so here’s a pretty cool definition, followed by an even cooler layman’s term definition, because we’re just cool like that!
Cool definition
“Culture is a set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of a society or social group. It encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs” UNESCO – Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity
Cooler layman’s terms definition
“Culture encompasses religion, food, what we wear, how we wear it, our language, marriage, music, what we believe is right or wrong, how we sit at the table, how we greet visitors, how we behave with loved ones, and a million other things,” Cristina De Rossi, an anthropologist at Barnet and Southgate College, London, in an interview with “Live Science”.
So we went through typing all that to ensure that culture is not confused with tradition, which only describes beliefs and behaviours that we pass on through generations. Tradition strengthens culture, but culture includes oh so much more than those 2 things.
Having said ALL of that, have I exceeded my 2 minutes yet? Don’t worry, I’ll be quick with the rest, because we’ll be showcasing our talents continuously, I figure this one is a great introductory segment. Through our talent segment (blogs), we will explain our programmes…and trust me, it’s a lot of programmes, and we are building more.
‘…but if you have so much why are you adding more?’ <- asked no one ever!
We hope you guys can help us build more, or at least keep re-energizing and adding to the ones we have. The list of our programmes can be found here, and the details of the programmes will be there as well, but for the cooler layman’s terms and a little more insight, the talent segment is where it’s at!
February 2021
We have so many talents it’s hard to decide which should go first…but what we’ve decided to do is take the easy way out and go in chronological order….that being said, our first talent is the Culture & Arts Calendar.
In 2014 the Division started its Culture and Arts Calendar, seems like a small feat but having worked on it fully for the first time in 2020, this team can assure you, IT IS NOT. The amount of information we have had to sift through, the persons we have had to hunt down, the calls made, and weekends spent creating the content – we think the Calendar may be one of our most time consuming endeavours.
Each year we choose a theme based on suggestions received from the community and our colleagues, on things that should be captured and preserved in our Culture & Arts Calendar. This year we are talking about Anguilla’s culture under the theme ‘Know Ya Culture’.The team began work on November 2020 by calling persons, visiting their homes to conduct interviews and generally seeking information from community partners. To date we are more than halfway through the process with the aim of launching on James Ronald Webster Day.
Some of the topics you can expect to see in this year’s calendar include How We Did It, which will include some ‘how-tos’ of traditional items; Remember When, which will highlight things we used to do that some persons may have forgotten, or not have known about; Traditional Times, and the list goes on.
<this is where we put on our serious voice>
If you or anyone you know would like to contribute to our Culture and Arts Calendar this year, with anything Anguillian culture, email us at youth.culture@gov.ai
There’s not much else we can say about the process without boring you completely, but we promise that next time around, we’ll include some photos on the blog so you’ll at least you get to see beautiful people and/or things.
Before we forget…we do have an ongoing programme called Know Ya Culture, yes it’s the same name as the calendar this year…I mean it’s a catchy name so we figure we can definitely use it twice! But we digress. The programme is currently broken into a few programmes, a radio show, a road show and a few other things, but the basis of it is to provide YOU with cultural titbits…so your cultural titbit until next time is
On 17th June 1988, the Anguilla Chamber of Commerce opened a Fish Market in the old Ice Plant building in The Valley.
Do you know where the old Ice Plant building was? Comment on our FB Page or tag us in your post with the answer, maybe, just maybe, we may give you a prize!
March 2021
In case you missed it, we launched our Culture Calendar!! You can stop by the office and purchase one for US$5.00, or you can check out the links on our FB and IG page for the electronic copy. You’re going to love the stories….at least we hope so, let us know if you found them interesting, boring, or just okay.
But we aren’t here to talk about the Calendar again…This is all about the Anguilla Non-Fiction Literary Competition. This annual event was first held in 2020 with over twenty one (21) participants vying for the top prizes. The competition is a product of persons who love Anguilla, and are always willing to give back. This event was not only fully sponsored by a lover of Anguilla, but he also birthed the idea for competition. This is the point in the talent segment where you hear us thanking our sponsor over and over and over….Mr. James Lewis, Mr. James Lewis, Mr. James Lewis a long returning visitor to, and lover of Anguilla; we thank you! Mr. Lewis envisioned that the competition would not only capture the interest of the people of Anguilla, but encourage both young persons and adults to increase their interest and skill in non-fiction writing, with significant emphasis on Anguilla. We read ALL the stories…and boy were they good. We know that the judging committee had a tough time selecting (yes we had a 3-person judging committee, this is the Queen Show after all). The competition focused solely on non-fiction work in the categories of Youth, Young Adults, and Adults and could be done in almost any format, 3 winners in each category, and EC$9000.00 in prizes.
This year, we are running the competition again, if you want to see the standard you have to live up to in writing…check out last year’s submission here. Stay locked to our socials to find out when and where the Anguilla Non-Fiction Literary Competition will be held!
I know we promised you pictures! Well we’ve only got two right now…it’s a photo of us! Your beautiful Culture & Arts Division team, and some of the awesome Youth & Culture team – we clean up pretty okay don’t ya think? Were you at The National Culture & Arts Awards in 2020?
April 2021
We told you it’s a year-long talent show…and we are just getting warmed up, when it gets really hot, that’s when we’ll pull out the costumes…we know you’re waiting for the costume segment so you can see all our pretty colours!
But this time we want to highlight Festival Del Mar and our first month in the Culture Calendar.
Festival Del Mar always promises to be a great event. This year, the committee decided to host only one day, coming on the heels of COVID-19 – we did such a great job not mentioning it ‘til now right?