A consultation workshop is currently organised by the Culture Division of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for the cultural groups and individual artists at the National Archives conference room.

It is a two-day workshop which commenced yesterday, and will end today, May 30, 2017.

The workshop is mainly awareness and consultation workshop organised for the cultural association leaders, cultural group leaders and individual artists.

There are about 30 participants who are representing various cultural groups, cultural associations and individual artists have attended the workshops.

The participants represent various cultural sectors including music, carvers, weavers, panpipers, cultural dancing groups and painters.

The aims of the workshop are to inform the participants of the current and ongoing work of the culture division, to gather important perspectives from the participants and identify the issues affecting their respective groups in the cultural sector.

In the opening remarks the director of culture Mr Dennis Marita introduced to the participants the importance of organising such workshops for cultural stakeholders.

He stated that from this workshop and upcoming similar workshops, his division could maintain a good dialogue with the cultural groups, associations, individual artists and relevant cultural stakeholders.

He said that with good dialogue and collaboration with the cultural groups, association, individual artists and relevant stakeholders it will enable his division to establish a baseline for culture industry development in the country.

He further stated that by good dialogue and collaboration with the cultural stakeholders it will help to identify the issues affecting them especially the artists who actually engaged in the cultural sector.

From this he said his division could able to make strategies and action plan for mainstreaming cultural industry to fully contribute to the nation building of the country.

He further stated that his division is working on ratifying the two UNESCO conventions which are the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage 2003 and the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions 2005.

He said hopefully his division will ratify the two conventions this year.

Mr. Marita also revealed that this division is also working on the Traditional Knowledge & Expression of Culture Bill which is yet to be abled before parliament.

He said that once this bill is passed by parliament then the artists could fully benefit from their work as there’s a law in place which guides their right as producers.

The facilitators of the workshop have informed the participants that if we are not start looking at ways to protect and safeguard our cultures then we will lose our beautiful and valuable indigenous cultures.

And in order to protect and safeguard our cultures each one of us need to understand and appreciate his or her own culture, value it, care for it and enjoy it.

In that way one could contribute to protect and safeguard our cultures of our country Solomon Islands.

It is an informative workshop as expressed by some of the participations during their discussions at the workshop.

One participant has expressed that it is very important to regularly contact such workshop for our rural communities and schools.

The participant strong stated that one of reasons why we are losing our cultures is the missing link between the parents and children.

He said that due to the influence of the western cultures which introduced institutions such as education and religion, the link between parents and children was broken down.

He pointed out that children have not time to spend with their parents as they were separated from their parents when they were engaged with education and other modern influences.

He further stated that our government especially the relevant authorities and stakeholders must now look at ways to address this issue as we nearly lose our cultures.

The workshop will end today as it is the second and the last day of the workshop.

–MCT PRESS