Culture Canon Competition
The Latvian Academy of Culture has been organising the Culture Canon Competition for Schoolchildren since 2012. New challenges are set for the competition each year, encouraging participants to study current events in Latvian culture and art from different perspectives, and creatively reflect them in relation to the Latvian Culture Canon.
Taking part in the competition, schoolchildren reinforce their knowledge and skills and acquire new fundamental aspects of cultural competence by implementing their own creative activities, including by developing their own analysis of contemporary cultural treasures, short films about families’ cultural traditions, creative performing-arts productions, and board games.
The Culture Canon Competition contributes to the preservation of cultural heritage, makes its features relevant, draws attention to the diversity of public cultural processes and differences in value systems, as well as promoting schoolchildren’s creativity and their civic participation in the creation of Latvia’s cultural space. The tasks set in the competition are related to the treasures of the Latvian Culture Canon and encourage their identification, further study and communication. While the competition was originally intended as a cultural-science education Olympiad, it has now acquired a deeper meaning in developing schoolchildren’s awareness of culture and their creativity, and has become an annual tradition in Latvia’s cultural education.
Each year more than 60 teams from schools all over Latvia take part in the competition. The competition takes place in at least two rounds, where the first round takes place in five cultural and historical regions: Kurzeme, Zemgale, Vidzeme, Latgale and Rīga. 5−16 school teams qualify for the competition final.
The competition is organised by the Latvian Academy of Culture in partnership with the Ministry of Culture, the National Centre for Education, the Latvian National Centre for Culture and the National Library of Latvia. The competition’s target audience is high school students at Latvian general education schools and senior students at specialist art and music schools. Minority schools are also particularly encouraged to take part each year.
Contacts:
Prof. Anda Laķe
Vice-Rector for Research
Latvian Academy of Culture
E-mail: anda.lake@lka.edu.lv
www.lka.edu.lv
www.facebook.com/kulturaskanons