Culture minister says art contest a way to preserve Bajan life, history

Art from dozens of amateur painters in villages from across the nation will be on show all year as the Prime Minister’s Office unveiled its inaugural Paint Your Village Competition which the minister for culture said uses art to preserve Barbadian culture and history.

Works from the competition will be exhibited at the Barbados Library Service’s Bridgetown headquarters and other locations during the course of the year.

The competition attracted 34 artists from eight to 46 years old.

Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office with responsibility for Culture Senator Dr Shantal Munro-Knight said even though children may believe that art preservation is something for the older generation, supporting culture and the arts has become a major global priority for numerous countries, many of which are currently facing the removal of significant historical figures and contexts from the public eye.

“In certain countries now, they are rewriting history books to change history, to change the story of the African diaspora, to change the story of who we were, who we are, and to change our journey [and] suffering,” she told the winning entrants at an award ceremony for the competition at the ministry’s Sky Mall office. “If we don’t ground ourselves to understand where you come from, and those history books are changed, it means then that somebody can come and fool you. You would not know the history and understand where you have come from, and understand the resilience of the people who have fought to bring you here.”

Senator Munro-Knight thanked the entrants for their efforts in showcasing different aspects of Barbadian culture and stressed that artists and citizens as a whole must take ownership of their history and way of life.

“This will become a lived piece of expression that others will be able to see,” she declared. “That next year, perhaps others will be sitting in that chair and we will be able to build a body of work that expresses for Barbados, [that] this is our community, this is our village. 

“We have to have ownership, you have to have ownership of the vision that you see for our community and the vision you see for Barbados. Unless you do that, unless you have that ownership, unless you see and unless you are able to express that, it leaves the opportunity for somebody else to come and express it for you. That is not the kind of Barbados we are intending to build.

“At the Division of Culture, we are working towards shaping culture that is grounded within our communities, grounded within the Barbadian persona of who we want, not a culture that is driven by others… a culture that values what we have.” (SB)