S.C.A. students hold history exhibition
Also at the Mexican Institute this week is an exhibition by St. Catherine’s Academy students. The show is part of a creative approach to history and the results far exceeded the expectations of the teacher who gave the assignment. We’re sure you will also find the student’s work a very enjoyable way to learn more about Belizean, and Caribbean, history.
Melissa Espat, History Teacher, S.C.A.
“It?s for any history fans, anybody who likes history, anybody who is into debating all the histories, you know how some people think of it one way, some people think of it another way. So it?s nice for them to come and see it.”
Jacqueline Woods, Reporting
The History That Made the Caribbean is Saint Catherine Academy?s first art exhibition. The display depicts relevant themes in Caribbean History.
Melissa Espat
“Primarily the history students are preparing for the CXC general examinations and the syllabus itself has ten themes that they need to work on. And so we decided what a better way to look at the themes than through art. So I?ve asked them to divide themselves into groups, get their themes and do some representation of the main idea that the theme focuses on.”
The students had two months to prepare, but what they managed to create in just eight weeks was beyond what their history teacher Melissa Espat had expected. Espat says the young women made pieces of art that symbolize the different eras during which the Caribbean grew into what it is today: multiBcultural, multiBlingual and multiBfaceted.
Melissa Espat
“The Arawaks had their idols, and all of them took it with them. They are made out of cotton, bones, ancestor?s bones and they thought it would be good luck. We have the Caribs who carved their scriptures on rocks, and they felt that their spirits would get messages from them. The Mayas of course, we?re concentrating on the classical period, which was the pivotal of the Mayas, that time when art and architecture was at its best. Then, we move on to sugar and slavery, which as we know, the middle passage was the worst of all of them. Then we have the sugar and slavery where the slaves were working for the master for profitable gain. We have how the slaves rioted against this through revolutions, and it shifts on over, coming closer to the U.S. and the Caribbean focusing on Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, the British Caribbean, even though a lot of people don?t know hat the U.S. had a lot of influence in these areas. Then coming over to independence, in Belize we had a lot of people like Leigh Richardson, George Price, Philip Goldson, who him and Leigh Richardson were arrested for twelve months for just putting something over ?The Belize Billboard? at the time. Then we move on to the social life, how our culture has been influenced by our past, and that itself influences how our history is seen and how our culture is like.”
Jacqueline Woods reporting for News 5.
The exhibition will run until May sixth at the Mexican Institute on Newtown Barracks.
