Culture Vulture Challenge

"A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people." Mahatma Gandhi

Image Source: pixabay.com

Are you interested in travel, culture and history?
Are you looking for inspiration?
Do you want to get writing on Steemit and build up your followers?

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Culture Vulture

The tag #culturevulture is a place where you can share something unique about your country with the world. Instead of being a tag about travel or tourism this tag is more about sharing local experiences. Let's get inside the hearts and souls of the Steemit Community.

This challenge has been running since July 2017. To date we have seen participants from; Japan, Armenia, Taiwan, Indonesia, Nigeria, Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Philippines, South Africa and Burma, France, Ireland, China, Vietnam, Borneo, The US and more.

What the CV challenge is looking for generally falls under 4 themes:

Festivals

Is there a festival coming up that you have been waiting all year for?

A festival is an event that is celebrated by a community centering on an aspect of the community or culture. Every country or region has different festivals and even regional local celebrations. Festivals often have a religious origin but may also mark the end of a season or commemorate a major event in the history of the community.

Festivals are great to experience when you travel because they usually showcase the best local speciality foods, music, art as well as being great fun and a time for holidays.

Image Source: @bedusaini

Write about a festival in your country today!

Customs & Traditions

What are traditions, why are they important and how can you experience them?

Traditions passed down from generation to generation may have a symbolic meaning or cultural significance; clothes, dress, food, holidays, family gatherings, pass-times. Traditions and customs are bound tightly to our cultural identity and may not always be the easiest for outsiders to grasp.

Image Source: @livinguktaiwan

For me it's much more fun to stay in local accommodation when I travel. You get to experience local customs first hand instead of the generic 5 Star treatment that some hotels offer. This is what made the tradition of the Irish B&B world famous but increasingly there are examples from all over the world of homestays and other cultural exchanges that you experience.

Why not try a language course or cookery course for your next holiday and share your experience or even get help planning for it here at #culturevulture.

Food

In some respects nothing expresses a culture more than its food. The climate, culture, religion, the family structure and even way of life are all represented. When we travel or live overseas nothing brings you home like the taste or aroma of a dish from your childhood.

Image Source: @sweetpea

Food is close to my heart and the types of food we eat, when we eat it, who we eat it with .What is that food you pack your suitcase with when you travel?

Art

"#culturevulture" considers art as a physical expression of creativity. It takes many forms from the visual to performance arts. Art can change the temperature of a room, it inspires, it heals unites and can divide people. Art often provides a focal point to a celebration. Like food, art is a rich expression of our culture.

"#culturevulture" will be a place to share expressions of the visual arts such as paintings , photography , sculpture and architecture, the performing arts such as dance and music and also the literary arts such as the written word and poetry.

Art provides a universal and accessible and portable way to experience a culture, no matter the language or the form. What form of Art expresses your culture? Share some photos (your own work please) on #culturevulture today!

Image Source @yuner

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Monthly Challenge

Each month any post tagged with "#culturevulture" will be eligible for the challenge.

The Rewards

I get great enjoyment reading and learning about cultures from around the world. Because of some generous donations and funds raised elsewhere there have been substantial prizes each month since we started this project.The prize funds are currently distributed as follows:

• There is a substantial prize each month for 1st place
• There are smaller but significant prizes for each of the 4 themes; Festivals, Customs & Traditions, Food, Art.
• There are usually some smaller prizes for notable mentions.

Each month there will be an announcement post with the exact details of the prizes for that month.

Exposure & Community

This challenge is much more than just the monthly prize fund.

Image Source: pixabay.com

Weekly Promotions

There are weekly promotions where select posts will be promoted to my followers. Culture Vulture will help you grow your following on Steemit and make connections all over the world. That is a promise!

Translations

As part of the Culture Vulture Challenge each week a select number of posts will be translated to other languages. The original authors will benefit from increased exposure and a share of the payout on the translated post. The Culture vulture challenge will also get a contribution towards future prize funds as part of this initiative.

Blogger Central

"#culturevulture" is also big on community. Over on Discord we are part of the Blogger Central (@steemitbc) family.
Join us for chat, ask questions and get to know some great people today https://discord.gg/pJXKRJV

Steemit Bloggers' Central strives to be a hub for the Steemit community to share their blogs, provide Steemit news, and host current Steemit related tutorials.

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How to Enter the CultureVulture (CV) Challenge

• All entries must be tagged with "#culturevulture", it doesn't need to be the first tag.
• The work must be your own, don't copy and paste from websites and claim credit. Feel free to reference work for descriptions/background but use quotes and provide a link to the original work.
• Make it clear whether the photos are yours or not. We prefer original content!!!, but (subject to permissions) it's ok to use third party photos to enhance your post.

Decisions

• Each month a guest judge will make picks for the winners, the guest judge and guaranteed prize fund will be announced mid way through the month.
• Post votes or payouts will not be the highest consideration.
• My decision will be final, I will try to be fair and unbiased.

So how to do well in this challenge?

Tips

• The posts will be judged on how well they met the challenge, how they shared a unique cultural aspect of the country. We would prefer post from locals or people living in a country rather than tourist posts.
• We encourage you to add a location tag so that it will appear on Steemit World Map. For more details check out @steemitworldmap and http://www.steemitworldmap.com/
  This is not a requirement but your post will get extra exposure.
• You may post in any language, we will endeavor to judge based on merit rather than language but to increase your chances visually appealing posts are recommended with clean layouts and suitable imagery.
  This will make it more likely that a judge or other curator will use google translate to read what you have written.

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Inspiration

Image Source: @kuenok

So what are you waiting for. Inspiration is all around us. It may be a daily ritual where you live or a local passion that always reminds you of home. Start digging out some old photos and get blogging today. I can't wait to read about your culture.

@eroche