And now for the good news

Lighthouse School students enjoy the Cayman Traditional Arts Heritage Arts programme (Photo by Lindsey Turnbull)

(CNS): News headlines rarely make people smile but that’s about to change at CNS with the launch of a our new website CNS Local Life, which will be dedicated to community and sports news and all the good stuff that is going on in these islands. As society’s watchdog, it is the media’s job to keep politicians and the movers and shakers of Cayman on their toes and accountable, which means that the daily news cycle is dominated by articles about serious matters.

However, there are many things happening in our communities that can bring a smile to readers, and instead of allowing those stories to get lost in the sea of reports about violent crime, unemployment, scandal and the poor use of public resources, we have created a dedicated platform for the positive side of Cayman life.

We are appealing to sports associations, charities, non-governmental organizations, service clubs, churches and the broader public to send in photos, features, press releases and information relating to the brighter side of life so we can spread the good news.

As well as highlighting the good news of the Cayman Islands, CNS Local Life will also provide a platform to showcase the talent we have here. Artists, poets, musicians, writers (fiction and non-fiction) are invited to send examples of their work and a short bio to admin@caymannewsservice.com. This can be in the form of Word docs or PDFs (so long as we can cut and paste), jpegs, pngs, gifs as well as videos in MPEG-4 or (much preferred) the iframe code.

“So this is a chance for budding standup comics, poets, writers and artists (whether they paint in oils or sketch cartoons) to let the community know about their work,” said CNS Manager Nicky Watson. “If you’ve made a short film, have video clips of skateboarding tricks, or you just have a knack of telling a joke — whatever your talent is, let us display it for you and brighten up everyone’s day. Children under the age of 18 must get a parent or guardian’s consent and please don’t do anything dangerous.

“There is a particular art that is deep-rooted in Cayman culture but often under-valued, and that is the art of storytelling,” Watson continued. “So if you have a clip of someone telling an anecdote that you’d like to share, let us know — with their permission, of course.”

Check out CNS Local Life and see what we have for your weekend reading.

CNS Local Life is the fourth website in the growing CNS family. Cayman News Service was created by Nicky Watson and Wendy Ledger in 2008 has gone from strength to strength as a result of its popular interactive nature as well as being on top of the news cycle.  That was followed by CNS Business, which focuses on the commercial side of Cayman, and FreeCayAds, a free classified marketplace.