Joseph Poleon was a cultural icon of tremendous musical repute whose passing is being mourned island-wide.

Msgr. Anthony, in the spirit of the upcoming Emancipation Day, urges Saint Lucians to gain a greater appreciation for the country’s cultural icons.

Focussing on documentation and research, Msgr. Anthony says citizens can become amateur researchers and chronicle the experiences and stories of their grandparents and elderly folk.

“There are a number of us who have researched our field, but we want to encourage people to recognise that today, there's what is called citizen research. In other words, anybody with a cell phone can be a researcher.

They have their grandparents around them. They have cultural activists in the community. Just go and talk to them about their life, their experience, their history. And that becomes a document for us,” he encouraged.

Msgr. Anthony also made a call for the establishment of what he terms a “heroes park” which will feature the contributions of the island’s cultural icons.

“There's a concept which we had been pushing before - a hero's park. So even if you don't have someone who has the level of a national hero, like Sir John Compton and George Charles, you have a person like [Rameau Poleon] who is a national cultural hero,” he said.

An awareness and appreciation of cultural icons and their legacies, he adds, should be a major part of Emancipation Day Celebrations.