The Vanuatu Cultural Centre (in Bislama Vanuatu Kaljoral Senta [1] or "VKS"; in French Centre Culturel du Vanuatu), founded in 1955, [2] is the national cultural institution of Vanuatu. It is located in the capital Port Vila.
From 1995 to 2006, the VKS was run by Ralph Regenvanu. From 2007 until his termination in November 2014, Abong Marcelin was director. Ambong Thompson is currently acting Director. [3]
Describing itself as "an organisation that works to record and promote the diverse cultures" of Vanuatu, the Vanuatu Cultural Centre fulfills the role a national body for the preservation, the protection and the promotion of the different aspects of the culture of the archipelago. The Vanuatu Cultural Centre is an umbrella organization which includes :
Its aim is to record and promote the traditional indigenous cultures of Vanuatu in their various aspects - from sand drawing to music, land diving, other "customary practices" and "indigenous knowledge"-, but also the country's "contemporary arts and music". [4]
Among its projects is the Oral Traditions Collection Project, started in 1976, which has been described as "without doubt, the Pacific's most successful grassroots cultural documentation program". [5]
The Centre produces radio programmes and videos aimed at cultural promotion, preservation or revival. As of 1996, the centre's collection contained "approximately 2500 hours of audio tape, 2300 hours of video tape, twenty-three hours of 16-millimetre film footage, thirty hours of 8-millimetre film footage, 3000 early (up to 1950s) black-and-white photographs, and around 4000 colour slides, colour negatives and black-and-white negatives". Access to some of this material is restricted, being tabu. Some material may be accessed only by men, some only by women, and some only by members of particular indigenous cultural groups. [5]
In 2002 the German painter Ingo Kühl, after participating in an expedition of the Vanuatu Cultural Center to ceremonies of the indigenous people on Malakula, his works that were created there were shown in an exhibition at the National Museum of Vanuatu and in 2004–2005 at the Ethnological Museum of Berlin. [6]
Vanuatu, officially the Republic of Vanuatu, is an island country in Melanesia, located in the South Pacific Ocean. The archipelago, which is of volcanic origin, is 1,750 km (1,090 mi) east of northern Australia, 540 km (340 mi) northeast of New Caledonia, east of New Guinea, southeast of Solomon Islands, and west of Fiji.
Port Vila, or simply Vila, is the capital and largest city of Vanuatu. It is located on the island of Efate.
Shefa is one of the six provinces of Vanuatu, located in the center of the country and including the islands of Epi and Efate and the Shepherd Islands. The province's name is derived from the initial letters of SHepherd and EFAte. It has a population of 78,723 people and an area of 1,455 km2. Its capital is Port Vila, which is also the capital of the nation.
Malakula Island, also spelled Malekula, is the second-largest island in the nation of Vanuatu, formerly the New Hebrides, in Melanesia, a region of the Pacific Ocean.
Ni-Vanuatu is a large group of closely related Melanesian ethnic groups native to the island country of Vanuatu. As such, Ni-Vanuatu are a mixed ethnolinguistic group with a shared ethnogenesis that speak a multitude of languages.
Terence Michael Crowley was a linguist specializing in Oceanic languages as well as Bislama, the English-lexified Creole recognized as a national language in Vanuatu. From 1991 he taught in New Zealand. Previously, he was with the Pacific Languages Unit of the University of the South Pacific in Vanuatu (1983–90) and with the Department of Language and Literature at the University of Papua New Guinea (1979–83).
Malo is an island in Vanuatu 3 km (1.9 mi) off the southern coast of Vanuatu's largest island, Espiritu Santo, in Sanma Province. It has a circumference of 55 km (34 mi) and an area of 180 km2 (69 sq mi). It is 17 kilometres or 11 miles long, and 13 kilometres or 8.1 miles across at its widest point. The highest point on the island is Mount Malo.
Erromango is the fourth largest island in the Vanuatu archipelago. With a land area of 891.9 square kilometres (344.4 sq mi), it is the largest island in Tafea Province, the southernmost of Vanuatu's six administrative regions.
The Maison Saint-Gabriel Museum is located in Montreal, Quebec and is dedicated to preserving the history, heritage and artifacts of the settlers of New France in the mid 17th century. The museum consists of a small farm, which has been administered for more than 300 years by the Sisters of the Congregation of Notre Dame of Montreal, founded by Marguerite Bourgeoys in Montreal in 1658.
Alexandre François is a French linguist specialising in the description and study of the indigenous languages of Melanesia. He belongs to Lattice, a research centre of the CNRS and École Normale Supérieure dedicated to linguistics.
Ralph John Regenvanu is a Ni-Vanuatu anthropologist, artist and politician. He has been a Member of Parliament since September 2008, was a member of Cabinet for most of the period from December 2010 to January 2012 and then from March 2013 to June 2015, and was the Director of the Vanuatu National Cultural Council from 1995 until December 2010.
This article presents an overview of the culture of Vanuatu.
The National Museum of Vanuatu is located in the Vanuatu Cultural Centre (VCC) in Port Vila, Vanuatu. It specializes in exhibits relating to the culture and history of this group of islands in the South Pacific. It is unique amongst Pacific national cultural institutions for rejecting many aspects of European museology, and creating new ways of working which value kastom practices.
The Pacific Islands Museums Association (PIMA) is, as its name suggests, an association of museums located in the region of the Pacific islands. Its stated aims include facilitating the "safeguarding and preservation of Oceania’s heritage and heritage places"; "disseminat[ing] cultural heritage information" among Pacific Islanders; and advising governments on policies to manage cultural heritage.
Sand drawing is a ni-Vanuatu artistic and ritual tradition and practice, recognised by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.
The National Library is the national library of Vanuatu. Located within the Vanuatu Cultural Centre in Port Vila, it contains about 15,000 books and serves both as a national repository for "rare and special" material, and as a lending library. It was established in April 2004.
Nicolai Michoutouchkine, a Russian from Vanuatu, was a painter, artist, designer, and collector of Pacific artifacts.
Darrell T. Tryon was a New Zealand-born linguist, academic, and specialist in Austronesian languages. Specifically, Tryon specialised in the study of the languages of the Pacific Islands, particularly Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and the French-speaking Pacific.
Lissant Mary Bolton is an Australian anthropologist and the Keeper of the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum. She is particularly known for her work on Vanuatu, textiles, and museums and indigenous communities.
Nadia Kanegai is a social entrepreneur, politician and historian from Vanuatu. She made the first study of women's traditional tattooing on Ambae. She has stood as a candidate in three elections in Vanuatu and was a prominent community activist during the 2017 and 2018 eruptions of Manaro Voui.
17°44′43″S168°19′03″E / 17.7452°S 168.3175°E
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