CHASE Supporting Annual Ananse Soundsplash Storytelling Festival

For the past 20 years, the Culture, Health, Arts, Sports and Education (CHASE) Fund has been demonstrating its commitment to supporting arts and culture in Jamaica.

Its latest endorsement is the sponsorship of the recently concluded Ananse Soundsplash Storytelling Conference and Festival, which explores the country’s rich oral tradition.

The annual events are produced by Ntukuma, the Storytelling Foundation of Jamaica, and have been receiving financial support from the CHASE Fund since 2012.

“Ananse Soundsplash is an eight-legged road show and each day we do something different. I think the CHASE Fund is impressed with the way we take the festival to the people,” Storyteller and Founder of Ntukuma, Dr. Amina Blackwood Meeks, tells JIS News.

“I believe that we are the only festival that is not bound to a location; we go all over Jamaica in every crevice and corner, and I believe that these are some of the reasons why they have always supported us,” she adds.

The CHASE Fund provided $1 million towards the 2023 staging of the conference and festival, which marks the 25th anniversary of the event and the 11th year since it has been rebranded as Ananse Soundsplash.

Like past years, the funding has enabled the festival to impact persons across Jamaica, including thousands of children who continue to participate virtually.

Dr. Blackwood Meeks says the financial assistance has also allowed for engagement of storytellers from around the world to share their culture and learn more about that of Jamaica.

She is grateful for the continued support from the CHASE Fund and looks forward to future partnerships in using storytelling to assist in the country’s progress.

“Stories are one of the tools we have at our disposal for personal development, for community empowerment and, ultimately, for contributing to national development. Sometimes, when we look at our Ananse stories we see that the millennium development goals and the sustainable development goals are all there – caring for the environment, respecting the elderly and so on,’ Dr. Blackwood Meek points out.

Chief Executive Officer of the CHASE Fund, W. Billy Heaven, tells JIS News that the organisation continues to support Ananse Soundsplash because of its emphasis on oral traditions.

“Passing down our traditional stories with storytelling is dynamic, creative and very important. Ananse Soundsplash emphasises our oral traditions… and has emerged to become a national, regional, and international event,” he notes.

Mr. Heaven says funding is made available under the CHASE Fund’s arts and culture portfolio each year, which supports programmes in the visual and performing arts as well as initiatives that improve libraries, archives, and documentation facilities across the country and restore and maintain the country’s historic sites and monuments.

“We have strived to achieve our mandate, operating with candour and transparency, even as we upgrade our systems to ensure that the worthy projects within our culture, health, arts and education ambit receive the support they need.

“In particular, the arts engender the creativity and spirit of our people; therefore, we are mindful of the need to enhance the contribution by citizens and institutions to national development in this sector,” Mr. Heaven says.

Several festivals promoting Jamaica’s literary, music and art traditions, have received sponsorship support from the CHASE Fund over the past two decades.