Each month, Breesha Maddrell, director of Culture Vannin, looks at the journey of Manx culture and its importance to our sense of identity and belonging. This month is her final column before she passes the baton on to online and educational resources officer James Franklin

I’ve had just over a year looking back at 40 years of the Manx Heritage Foundation and Culture Vannin, and for my final column, it’s about time I fixed my gaze more firmly on the future.

By the time this article appears, two significant events which celebrate and effectively safeguard the Isle of Man’s future in terms of culture – the Manx Folk Awards and Shennaghys Jiu Celtic Festival – will have happened, and everyone will be gearing up for a third in the form of the Guild.

Back in September, I talked about how different things are today than when I was young, with all schoolchildren now having access to Manx culture and cultural heritage.

The Manx Folk Awards, organised by Culture Vannin and the Department of Education, Sport and Culture, are a great example of how to provide a supportive space for young people to share what they are doing within the friendliest of competitions.

The awards place emphasis on having fun while celebrating Manx culture, with opportunities for complete beginners as well as seasoned performers.

Shennaghys Jiu Celtic Festival also focuses on youth, with family ceilis, concerts, and sessions at its heart.

It’s full of fun and friendships between Celtic nations, and this sense of exchange of ideas and inspiration is incredibly important.

The festival name means ‘Tradition Today’ and it certainly makes Manx culture part of the lives of many talented young dancers, musicians and singers, as well as those who just love to join in with a ceili or enjoy a performance.

With events like these, we might be forgiven for thinking the future is secured, and in many ways it is.

One of our roles at Culture Vannin is to think of the challenges that may face Manx culture in coming years, to think about creating an environment in which those young champions will thrive.

We need to remember to dream, to have a vision, to be innovative and ambitious.

Sometimes, that’s through commissioning or developing new projects, at other times, it’s by providing funding in the form of grants. A common theme in these columns has been the fact that culture doesn’t sit still.

We all have a role to play in pulling the threads of the past forward to weave them into new patterns.

We do that best by looking after those old threads, by safeguarding and carrying them forward, but also by not being afraid to add in new, bright threads of our own.

UNESCO summarises why intangible cultural heritage is so important very clearly, talking about maintaining cultural diversity, about understanding our own culture as a way to enable communication with other cultures.

Developing this kind of mutual respect for others also happens to be inter- and multi-generational by its very nature. We carry things forward from one generation to the next, and, as long as we do that in ways that are inclusive and have integrity, then we will serve Manx culture properly.