Carolyn Russell Smith spreading Khulcha in Manchester
For more than 29 years, young people in Mandeville, Manchester, have benefitted significantly from arts education programmes delivered by the Khulcha Theatre School of Dance.
The school’s founder, Carolyn Russell Smith, who has been a pioneer of the performing arts, is a recipient of the Prime Minister’s Jamaica 55 Commemorative Medal of Appreciation for Service to Jamaica in Education and the Creative Arts.
She was bestowed with the honour by Prime Minister Andrew Holness, during an awards ceremony at Jamaica House on April 25.
“It is nice when someone can recognise that you are doing something because you love it and you are passionate about helping people, especially the young girls of today. I am trying to see if I (can help) some of them so that we (can) have a better Jamaica,” she says.
Smith said that the idea of starting the school came about while she worked as a Jamaica Cultural Development Commission performing arts adjudicator in the annual parish competitions.
She said that during her islandwide sojourns to the various parishes, she kept hearing rural folks lamenting “that everything is happening in Kingston.”
“I wanted to prove them wrong (by) taking it (dance) out to the country, because there (is a myriad) of talent in the countryside,” she points out.