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art folio: rey

Art Foilio: Nonong Villavert

location : See map of Antique

Members 30% Local Artists the Bungkaras family or PA volunteer  

Suba ni Leda escapade 

e-mail : badong102003@yahoo.ca

 

 

 

 

 

GEOGRAPHICAL AND SOCIAL SETTING

            The project setting is the Province of Antique.

            Antique is one of the 6 provinces of Region VI, the Western Visayas region. The province is an elongated land area of around 250,000 hectares with a total population of 410,000 (more or less 72,000 household) spread out over 590 barangays. One third of all barangays are coastal. Still the coastal and lowland area comprises only 18% of the territory while more than 80% is hilly and mountains.

            Antique is the poorest province in the region according to 1192 classification by the Presidential Management Staff (PMS) based on nine development indicators. Antique ranks as the fourth poorest among the 76 Philippine provinces. All of Antique’s 18 municipalities, including the provincial capital, are only fourth, fifth and sixth class municipalities indicative of the low tax income and general level of poverty in the province. Antique is purely agricultural province where the majority of the people rely on farming and on fishing for their livelihood. An estimated 22,000 hectares of land is farmed by share tenants. One out of 5 households living from agriculture is landless and survives on seasonal agricultural labor during planting and harvesting time. Antique remains a major supplier of seasonal agricultural laborers (sakadas) to the sugar haciendas in the neighboring island of Negros. Lack of income generating opportunities makes Antique also a lead supplier of migrant labor for Manila and for the international shipping industry. A very significant portion of rural households is therefore female headed.

            A major characteristic of the province is its physical isolation: mountain ranges account for it that there is only a southern and northern access road to the province, there are air and sea transport connections with the other islands except for a weekly connection boat connection to Manila.

 

CULTURAL SETTING

Culturally Antique has some particular characteristics: Antique has its own distinct language, Kiniray-a. In a number of barangays Antique boasts of a tradition of popular plays combining elements from pre-Spanish times, from the Spanish colonial times, and from modern influences. In a few communities these cultural forms have been transmitted from generation to generation of barangay based performers. A number of far-flung villages and barangay boast also of local musicians (violin, guitar, bas) and folk writers with poetical debating (binangi-anay) skills, many of them women.

A major cultural and folkloristic happening in Antique is the yearly “Binirayan” festival between Christmas and New Year when the arrival is being re-enacted of the 10 datus from Sumatra who allegedly settled in Antique and Panay in the 13th Century.

These and other cultural manifestation are part of Antique popular cultural heritage.

Compared to other less isolated and more “developed” provinces. Antique has, in a way relatively greater richness in indigenous cultural expressions. Still, there are   disturbing indications of “erosion of traditional culture” due to factors such as: mass media and the promotion of a standardized consumerist culture, expanding recreational possibilities at the expenses of traditional forms, denigration of local culture as inferior to dominant urbanized Tagalog/Ilonggo culture.

Besides this the national government with its “Philippines 2000” and “Newly Industrialized Country (NIC) and Tiger Economy” goals pushes very much an economic and industrial development that tends to go at the expenses of cultural and ecological concerns.

It is in this context that particularly among development workers there is a growing awareness of the importance of “cultural action” for community building and strengthening. In Antique where NGO’s are involved in community organizing and community development in around 150 barangays much more sustained attention needs to be given to appreciating and maximizing popular cultural forms as major vehicles to enhance critical and community development concerns such as sound ecologically sustainable farming practices the promotion of gender equality and sensitivity and participation in local governance to name only a few.

Paranubliun’s thrust is therefore not art for art’s sake, but purposive art to advance specific developmental goals.

 

TARGET POPULATION

            The primary target groups of PARANUBLIUN are the rural fishing and farming communities of Antique preferably those that have been organized by NGOs. Priority communities are those with indigenous folk and traditional artists, with existing folk traditions and whose LGUs are supportive of culture and arts activities.

            Individual art practitioners and artists groups in poblacion centers are secondary targets. They are the pool of cultural workers for community-based cultural actions as well.

            Special attention is given the women, children and youth since they are marginalized sectors in the barangay. Besides they are most responsive to cultural events.

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