The Vanuatu Cultural Centre is Vanuatu’s national cultural heritage management body and is comprised of all the major cultural heritage institutions apart from the National Archives : the National Museum, the National Library, the National Film and Sound Archive and the National Cultural and Historic Sites Register. It is a statutory body with a board of management, the Vanuatu National Cultural Council, that is appointed by the Minister responsible for culture. The Cultural Centre receives an annual grant from government, also generates its own revenue from a range of commercial services and also applies for sponsorship and donor funds for the running of most of its programs.

The recent development of most significance for the running of the Centre has been the increase in the annual government grant in 2005 to the level requested by the Centre for many years, which covers all running costs (salaries and staff benefits, electricity, water and telecommunications) plus additional staff posts including a Deputy Director.

Sites (National Cultural and Historic Sites Register): Vanuatu joined the World Heritage Convention in 2002 and the Centre has applied to and received funding from UNESCO for two projects: one to nominate the Roimata Cultural Landscape site on Efate island for listing and another to do more site survey and registration work towards eventually nominating all sites associated with the volcanoes of Vanuatu for listing. The Roimata Cultural Landscape will be officially nominated in June this year (for potential listing in 2007). The funding received for the volcanoes program is facilitating the registering of cultural sites on a number of the seven islands of Vanuatu that have active volcanoes, as well as raising community awareness of the world heritage program.

In a joint project with archaeologists from the Australian National University (and funded by an Australian Research Council grant), work has begun on doing archaeological work in the northern islands of Vanuatu, most of which have had no archaeological work ever done on them. The main purpose of this work is to find evidence of prehistoric trade both within Vanuatu and with neighbouring countries (Fiji, the Solomons) as well as to raise awareness and provide training to local communities in archaeology. The excavation at Teouma on Efate island, at which the first Lapita-era cemetery in the Pacific was discovered in 2004, is continuing again this year, with an increased emphasis on educational activities for the many schools that visit from Port Vila (only 20 minutes drive away).

Another project has been the recent protection of 77 historic buildings in Port Vila – this is the first time any sites in Vanuatu have received state protection and a further list of sites threatened by development on the island of Efate (where Port Vila is located) is being readied for protection in coming months. The Centre is working with the Attorney General’s Office to amend the legislation being used to protect these sites to make it more effective.

Literature/documents (National Library): The National Library was moved in early 2005 to occupy a purpose-built space in the National Museum building (which is much better for preservation purposes). The computer-based catalogue of the library has been greatly improved and over half of the 10,000 item collection has now been catalogued and can be accessed using keywords - this work is ongoing and should be up-to-date by the end of this year. Links have been made with many overseas libraries holding Vanuatu literature and copies of material on Vanuatu not already in our collections are slowly being obtained. A funding application to build a new building next to the Museum to house the National Archives and the National Library is “out there” awaiting a donor.

Artefacts (National Museum): In 2003, funding was received from the French Government to convert the National Museum’s single storage room into a number of smaller rooms whose environments could be properly controlled (in terms of pest access and micro-climate). These rooms were completed in 2004 and monitoring undertaken to date has demonstrated that the objectives of pest control and climate control have indeed been achieved – the National Museum now has storage rooms properly suited to artifact storage. One of the storage rooms has been air-conditioned solely for the purpose of maintaining international museum standards of temperature and humidity and this objective also has been achieved. After a couple more years of monitoring, the next step – to request the repatriation of particular items held in overseas collections – can be undertaken.

The European Union also funded a program to treat our entire artifact collection before it was put back into the new storage rooms: freezing was the method used, with artifacts being put in a refrigerated container for two weeks at –20 degrees centigrade. Over the course of the year 2005, the entire collection was treated and deposited back in the new storage rooms and only a few loads remain still to be treated.

Now that most of the collection has been treated and returned to the new storage rooms, re-cataloguing of the collections has begun, onto a new computer-based database. This new catalogue will also feature a digital image of each artifact.

In April last year, a workshop to redesign the main exhibition space of the museum was held which brought together key Cultural Centre staff and personnel from the National Gallery of Australia, the Adelaide Arts Centre and the Australian Council of Engineers. The workshop was facilitated and partly funded by the ‘Friends of the Vanuatu Museum’ association, which is now seeking funding for implementation of the resulting re-design.

This year, as part of ICOM Australia’s Museum Partnership initiative, the Curator of the Museum is being trained at the Australian Museum in Sydney to conserve and restore the Lapita pots uncovered at Teouma. A second component to this partnership is a pilot project to place the Australian Museum’s Vanuatu collections on-line, with a facility for creator-communities in Vanuatu to view the collections and add additional information at the National Museum in Port Vila.

Audio, audiovisual and photographic collections (National Film and Sound Archive): The documentation of intangible cultural heritage (audio and audiovisual), the preservation of these records and the provision of access to them remain the core activities of the Cultural Centre.

Funding has just been received to archive all audio recordings on hard disc (which is the international standard as recommended by the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives, IASA) and the first set of archived recordings has been sent to PARADISEC in Australia, which the Cultural Centre is now designating as our off-site second-copy archive for digital data storage.

As part of works to reconfigure the museum storage area, a new room for storing of the photographic collections was created. All the photographs have now been moved into this room, a new physical storage system established and a dedicated database set up. This year a new staff member has been contracted just to catalogue and input data for this collection.

The Cultural Centre also has the legal mandate to regulate filming of cultural subjects by foreign film crews in Vanuatu and using this mandate the Centre has placed a moratorium or ban on the filming of the nagol or land dive on Pentecost island. This ban has resulted from concerns over the lack of transparency in the distribution of funds received from film companies within the communities and also the distortion of the tradition by commercial pressures. The Cultural Centre hopes that this ban will motivate the communities to come up with a long-term management plan for the nagol as one of their most significant cultural assets.

Other programs and projects:

Access (cataloguing and databases): In 2005, the principle focus of the Cultural Centre’s work was to develop its databases and input all records from all its collections, to facilitate better access to them. So far about seven different databases have been established, for artifacts, sites, photos, films, sound recordings, languages and books. Databases still to be established include sand drawings and categories of heritage (music, dance, etc). The inputting of all the records is a time-consuming task and is ongoing.

Intangible cultural heritage: The fieldworkers network of the Cultral Centre, now comprising over 40 women and over 60 men fieldworkers, remains very active, with fieldworkers involved in varying degrees with a wide variety of projects within their own communities: projects ranging from the recording of oral traditions to the organization of arts festivals, assisting in the revitalization of certain rituals and craft skills and resourcing vernacular language and culture education in local schools.

Vanuatu has also been active in UNESCO’s intangible heritage program: in 2003, the Centre successfully nominated Vanuatu’s “sand drawing” tradition as a ‘Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity’ (in the same year this honour was also given to Tonga’s Lakalaka dance) and now the Centre has received funding from UNESCO for two projects under the intangible heritage program: a project to preserve and revitalize sand drawing and another to revitalize the production and use of traditional wealth items (the “Traditional Money Banks” project).

The sand drawing project includes funds to get a model law to protect indigenous cultural expressions drafted and widely distributed for consultation. At present, a local lawyer has been contracted to merge the two model laws developed for the region (the Pacific Island Forum’s model law dealing with use of traditional knowledge relating to biodiversity and the Secretariat of the Pacific Community’s model law dealing with cultural expressions) into one law dealing with both for Vanuatu. This new law will then be translated into Bislama and wide consultation undertaken before going before Parliament. The sand drawing project funds will also be used to assist a number of communities to construct large sailing canoes, which will be sailed to the 2nd National Sand Drawing Festival in August this year. The revitalization of the sailing canoe tradition has been the object of one of the Cultural Centre’s advocacy programs for many years now.

As part of the “Traditional Money Banks” (TMB) project, the Government has declared 2007 the “Year of the Traditional Economy”. A project to promote the production and use of mats will be undertaken in 2007, through which different traditions of mat-making will be documented and a collection made for the National Museum. A more fundamental focus of the TMB project is the revitalization of traditional governance within the modern state/government structure: to this end research into traditional governance structures and principles throughout Vanuatu and opportunities for the merging of the traditional and modern ‘western’ governance systems will be undertaken in Vanuatu this year, in collaboration with the National Council of Chiefs and expatriate researchers. Already, as a result of advocacy activities undertaken as part of this project, AusAID has made research into traditional governance systems and their strengthening a focus of its 2006-2010 governance program for Vanuatu.

Traditional Environmental Management (TEM): The Cultural Centre has been undertaking research into TEM and advocating its continued use as the basis of community management of resources and national environmental and resource use policy since 1997. A number of publications and advocacy materials (including films) – aimed both at communities and policy-makers at provincial and national government levels – have been produced and numerous workshops held at all levels also. The Cultural Centre continues to undertake research and advocacy on the topic, at community level but also at the frequent meetings and workshops organized to discuss environmental and resource management approaches by government, local and international NGOs and multilateral bodies (eg, SPC, UNEP). One of the desired outcomes is to integrate the teaching and learning of indigenous knowledge relating to TEM into the formal school curriculum and a pilot project to this end has been developed in collaboration with the Department of Education, the Vanuatu Environment Unit and the LINKS program of UNESCO. This project has yet to be implemented, however.

National history textbook: With funding from the New Zealand Government, the Cultural Centre was able to engage researchers to spend two years writing Vanuatu’s first national history curriculum textbook, which was launched in July 2005, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of independence. This is the first time a national history syllabus has been written in Vanuatu and it is hoped it will become the basis of a subject teaching local history in schools.

Language work: The National Language Council was established by Parliament in late 2005, with the Cultural Centre as its secretariat (although the Council had been operating for a number of years before this). The Council has completed its National Language Policy, which is now going through a period of consultation before being forwarded to government for official adoption – we believe this is the first national language policy to be developed in any Pacific Island country. Through the Council, work is being undertaken to: assist the Department of Education to implement its policy of vernacular education in preschool and year one effectively, develop orthographies (spelling systems) for languages which do not have one (for purposes of teaching them in school), develop vernacular materials (texts, books) for schools and communities, undertake salvage recordings and analysis on those languages recognized to be dying, and monitor and direct the work of linguist researchers to assist in achieving these ends.

In 2004, the men fieldworkers’ topic of research was languages and as a result of the information they collected, the Department of Linguistics at the Australian National University is now re-drawing the map of Vanuatu languages – this new map will soon be published.

Vanuatu Young People’s Project: The Vanuatu Young People’s Project (YPP) has been a program of the Cultural Centre since 1997. The current phase of the project, which commenced in late 2005, is divided into two main components: a research and advocacy component and a life skills training component. The purposes of this project are to (a) undertake an assessment of the situation of young people in Port Vila today and (b) provide these youth (and also youth in rural areas) with the skills to advocate more effectively for their own interests and have their needs addressed by their communities and policy makers. The YPP extends the cultural heritage work of the Cultural Centre into the area of contemporary youth culture and in particular the contemporary urban youth culture of Port Vila, where the Centre’s head offices are located. It also recognizes that the great majority of the population of the country are youth (under 25 years of age). The report of the current phase of research into the lives of young people in Port Vila is due at the end of June 2006.

Friends of the Vanuatu Museum: The “Friends of the Vanuatu Museum” was set up in 2003 and has significantly assisted the Cultural Centre. It helps tap into community support (in particular the more well-off expatriate population of Port Vila) and is able to provide funding and in-kind support for many of the Centre’s projects.

Website: The Centre also now has a new website : www.vanuatuculture.org. The website is set up using the software “Big Medium”, which is a content management system, which allows people with very limited knowledge of the internet to upload material onto the website.

Constraints:

Undoubtedly, the major constraint faced by the Vanuatu Cultural Centre is the lack of good human resources – the lack of motivated, qualified, competent ni-Vanuatu with a passion for culture and cultural heritage and sustainable development. The recent initiative by the University of the South Pacific (USP) to begin teaching a cultural heritage management major in 2007 – which could be taken at a distance by students in all the USP’s member Pacific Island countries – is therefore welcomed as a potential remedy to this situation.