Every opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate our accomplishments should be esteemed. Often, the gloom and doom would appear to overshadow the hope, peace and happiness in our society. The achievements of our people should be celebrated as often as possible.
In the performing arts, we may not have annual awards that can compare to America’s Grammys or the Oscars or the United Kingdom’s Brit or BAFTA awards, but we are not producing the same volume of work as in those countries. Our population is much smaller and funding is scarce.
Some years ago, there were music awards. For literary arts, there is the Guyana Prize for Literature, which would see the conferral of awards every two years but since 2017 the future of the prize has been in doubt. For drama, there is the National Drama Festival, which also produces awards. Private institutions, such as the Theatre Guild of Guyana, have also in past years held awards where many writers, directors, actors and actresses gained recognition. We also have the National Awards, Youth Awards, Sports Awards and also Media Awards.