Dili, December 7, 2024 (Média Democracia) – The Ministry of Youth, Sports, Arts, and Culture (MJDAC) through the Office of the Director of Information together with the Secretary of State for Arts and Culture (SEAC) held a coffee event to explain the progress of work and challenges during one year of implementation. This activity was held at the MJDAC Hall, Friday.
According to the Director General of Arts and Culture, Gil Paulino Santos Oliveira, arts and culture carried out community service activities based on the 2024 annual action plan and also operational work of inter-ministerial support which started from January to December this year.
“Two major tasks carried out by the Director General of Arts and Culture and the Director of Art Culture under the auspices of the State Secretariat for Arts and Culture, the results of the assessment based on waist circumference show significant signs from the general director to the national director with a value of 100% for implementation, funding activities including cross-ministerial work operations in other ministries,” said the Director General.
He continued, the Director General of Arts and Culture does not do much technical work. The principle of his work is to see the control solution and evaluate the work of the national director that is done. In addition, there are two activities such as organizing the work of the general director, and the other is manage financial administration to organize employee salaries.
“Another program is socialization to local governments, religious youth, including cultural groups in two municipalities, namely Aileu and Liquiça, through this program it is very important because it provides information to all parties to know how the Unisco conventions of 1972, 2003 and 2005 were.” He said.
He added that the activities carried out by the Director General were to strengthen the UNESCO NATCOP Agency initiative, we provide support to this partner so that they can conduct coaching and research in Turiskain on mother tongues that are almost extinct, therefore the Director General collected support funds of 10 million for the UNESCO NATCOP Agency, the results of which have been published in a book last month.
As the National Director of Cultural Heritage (DNPK), Manel Ximenez Smit said that the work competence of this field is to supervise identification and appointment in order to provide changes for researchers to handle technical works in the national territory.
“This Direction makes control over cultural elements that are under and above the ground his authority. We all know that elements of events that have an impact on our cultural heritage and types of history, through this instruction can provide intervention to give courage to politicians to express their attitudes towards the situation that occurs in our society.” He said.
He continued that in this concept, the direction has created a socialization program on the importance of cultural patrimony and material to our society because our target is that our society knows that culture lives with society, so this program must return to society because it is society that produces culture, so 75% of cultural art works are integrated with society.
“The community is the target or work of this cultural activity, we raise awareness of the importance of cultural heritage and materials to spread knowledge that our ancestors have their own cultural identity but we need to comply with the issue of maintaining protein reserves, cultural values come from our ancestors.” He said.
He added that the realization of the integration of Tais cultural heritage as we know at the beginning of this year the policy of the Ministry of Education to re-arrange the curriculum so that schools in Timor-Leste no longer have didactics related to art, can be an important thing to support in the context of practicing art and culture.
“The Ministry of Youth, Sports, Arts and Culture through the Secretary of State for Arts and Culture is reunifying the ranks of the ministries between the Secretariat of State for Arts and Culture and the Ministry of Education including the Timor-Leste National Committee for Cultural Heritage which carries out its duties on Tais, we are holding a curriculum integration congress for schools especially for cycle 3 so that students can learn more about the heritage of arts and culture.” He added.
On the other hand, the Head of the Department of Arts and Creative Culture Industry, Catarina Sarmentu da Costa said that through this directive, it talks about how to promote to citizens so that the new generation can get to know the culture that our ancestors passed down to us as the new generation.
“The Arts and Culture Division has seven activities, the first is the realization of arts and culture training activities, there are four parts, such as weaving, pottery, orvis and homa.” She said.
She continued, weaving is about the realization of how to make ceramics, this year there is also a training on crafts, we held it in two districts, namely Lautem and Manatuto, in Lautem it is more focused on making Tais, we pass it on to the mothers who make Tais and the next generation how to make them know the culture of making Tais so that it does not disappear in the future.
“From the national heritage division of arts and culture, cultural activities such as making tais from tais makers are carried out to be passed on to the younger generation so that they can learn more about how to make tais and the process of turning fine cotton into cotton to make tais.” She added.
She added that another activity carried out in Manatuto was how to make pan from clay through a long process for five days so that good results could be obtained.
“Traditional and innovative pots, traditional pots produced with clay do not use ink, but the innovative pots we produce must use many things like ink in order to draw, that’s what we call innovative pots. We also provide training to the younger generation on how to better understand pot production to promote domestically and abroad.” He said.
To further explain that other activities are making white gold into earrings, rings and others, other activities are making mats, hats and others. They also make identification “dahur” and theater, as we know that SEAC also has a mission of heritage of art and cultural production, in a department talking about the department of theater arts company because most of us as Timorese are now promoting dance culture domestically and abroad.
Reported by : Nelfiano
Picture by : Nelfiano