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Arts and culture magazine and creative agency Culturego celebrated its fifth year of existence in November. Founders Patrick Rasoanaivo and Adeline Gregoire said the journey has been an eventful and fulfilling one.

The couple launched their website, http://www.culturegomag.com, in 2013 to fill what they perceived as a gap for a go-to space of non-mainstream arts and culture.

Rasoanaivo said when they arrived in T&T, they had no idea what was happening in the cultural and artistic sectors and didn’t get clued in until almost two years later, especially as Facebook wasn’t what it is now. Gregoire said “we met in France and the information about where to go to see culture and creative stuff was everywhere. We figured we needed to create that here and that people would want something like that.”
Rasoanaivo said their first motto was “Culture needs to be accessible”, and they focused on the promotional aspect of the sectors. “We always saw newspaper articles about an event after the show was finished, but often didn’t know it was happening beforehand. A lot of people complain that there’s nothing to do in T&T, but it’s not true, and we really wanted to create that space where people could see they have these other options. We promote the entire range of cultural and creative expression equally, from art, theatre, performing arts, music, fashion, film, everything,” Gregoire said.
Rasoanaivo said interest and growth in the website were amazing, especially in the first two years. “We realized that a lot of diaspora and people from outside checked the Culturego website more than Trinidad, even up to today. We’ve shared something like 2,200 events since 2013. That shows the range of events that are happening. A lot more people also seem to be doing what we’re doing. Our first event was the TEDx after-party in 2013, and we experimented with having visual arts, life drawings and poetry in one space. Since then we’ve seen the creation of different organizations which do the same thing.”
The couple support their work on the website, and more recently a quarterly print magazine, through their work as a creative agency. “Culturego offers that service to any small or medium organization. We do a lot of pro bono work because that’s how creatives function and we understand that a lot of people have great ideas and there is just a lack of physical or energetic or financial support. So we assist, doing work free or at really affordable rates and stuff like that, just to ensure that the ideas gets off the ground. When we get paying clients we invest in promotion and organization of events, so anyone who is willing to hire Culturego for their branding and design makes an investment in the creative sector. It’s a direct investment that helps us do the magazine, the printing, our events, etc.,”
The couple also manage the Grundlos Kollectiv space on Cipriani Boulevard in Port-of-Spain as a space for creative expression and creativity. Rasoanaivo said “Since April we have had a full range of events, including dance shows, opera, intimate music jam sessions, art shows, art exhibitions, film screenings, architectural talks, etc. The creative sector benefits at a discounted rate at Grundlos because we understand how difficult it can be to organize a small event. Of course we have bills to pay but we try to facilitate the best we can so people can actually do art shows and cultural events.”
Building a community of creativity has led the couple to advocate for a greater collaborative approach to building the creative sector. Gregoire said “there isn’t a creative who doesn’t complain about the crab in a barrel syndrome, as in everybody wants to be the first to have done something and everybody is operating in silos. However, we believe you get further when you work together. It’s nice to be the first one but there’s a lot more value in building sustainable communities and sustainable collaborations, and it leads to exponential growth, as opposed to one or two people who are all the way at the top and the others are really struggling. I really hope that people would be less fearless, more trusting and more honest in the way that they approach collaboration. It should never be a fear of they’re going to steal my people, but what we need to think more about is that if we collaborated a little more, we could actually share each others’ events and each others’ audiences and benefit from those synergies.”
For more information, go to http://culturegomag.com, email infoculturego@gmail.com, and find them on Facebook and Instagram @culturegomagazine.