GCS prepares to take ‘culture to the home’

Gibraltar Cultural Services will take “culture to the home” in the coming days.

With his culture hat on, Minister for Public Health, John Cortes announced yesterday at the daily 4pm Government press conference that GCS is working and preparing a cultural programme and entertainment package which would be accessible to everyone at home either through live streaming or pre-recorded.

“In all this abnormality, let’s try and keep normality as much as possible,” he said.

With a lot of people now staying at home, and looking for things to do, he said GCS was working hard on entertainment on line, developing activity programmes for children and a full cultural programme including GibTalks, live performances, shows, and virtual art galleries.

Books are already being delivered to the elderly estates from the John Mackintosh Hall Library.

“Everybody is working together to keep the community going,” said Dr Cortes.

Any performer who wants to volunteer is welcome, he added, “so that we can take local culture into people's home, particularly the elderly, who may be looking for things to do”

Speaking to the Chronicle yesterday evening, Gibraltar Cultural Services Chief Executive, Seamus Byrne, said the aim was to have a structured informative, educational and entertainment programme.

“We are all working together and what is important is that we have a well-structured programme which will be for all ages,” Mr Byrne said.

Details of this, he said, would be available shortly but GCS was already working with different local entities including GAMPA on a number of initiatives including storytelling sessions for children.

“We want to post footage of exhibitions which have been on show at GEMA in the last year including the current exhibition by Victor Quintalilla ‘Cosmos’. GCS is also planning a virtual reality tour of the Mario Finlayson Gibraltar National Art Gallery."

All the events will be linked daily to social media and the websites including culture.gi

Any cultural entity that wants to support the on line programme initiative should contact the GCS Events Department on telephone 200 67236 or at info@culture.gi