My story 🎀:

I was born in Pereira, Colombia, and was lucky to grow up in a culturally rich and stimulating environment, where curiosity and the love of art were high priorities in my education. I was motivated to pursue the joys I had witnessed in artistic endeavors and to question how art and the humanities could be related to personal growth and social transformation.

I painted my way through my childhood in Bogotá, devoured the pages written by our great Latin-American writers, and explored the history of my country through poetry and school theatre performances. Amongst yellow butterflies of magic, folklore, and passion, I gathered lessons of resilience, love, and the power of creativity to bring people together. Lessons that led my path to the pursuit of writing. I figured if I couldn’t live all of the closest I could come would be to tell these stories. And that would be enough.

And while my desire for answers has not yet ceased, I have found a great amount of comfort in persevering in the journey for its resolution, through various mediums of expression, including artistic drawing, writing, and video creations.

In 2015 I moved to Madrid, Spain, to pursue a career in journalism and the humanities. I finished my studies at the Aristos European School and then enrolled in the bilingual Journalism program at the University Carlos III of Madrid where I was able to enhance my communication abilities and practice the master of both English and Spanish.

My time in Madrid was one of great personal exploration where thanks to a journalist I grew in the power of empathy and the capacity to adapt to different cultural contexts and social scenarios and the reassurance to embrace the unknown. These abilities have allowed me to enlarge my understanding of media and reaffirm my path through the world of communication.

Apart from my theoretical formation on cultural journalism, I was also able to explore this fusion outside of the classroom, in the cultural activities I was reporting on in my local area, where I got a close look at the functioning of the delegation of culture of the Town Hall of Getafe, got to interview great personalities in this music scene in Madrid, including Nuria Fernández Herranz or Carlos Díez. And witnessed the challenges and triumphs experienced by culture promoters, particularly during the sanitary crisis of 2020. As a result of this labor came the birth of several projects you can find in my portfolio, including a short documentary, a photographic feature, and several articles.

Another passion that has accompanied me since very early on has been my fascination for the fashion industry, as I conceive fashion as the ultimate manifestation of personal expression, and a wonderful tool to study the anthropological evolution of our communities. It is also a great point of reference for current trends and philosophies that allow us to identify inflection points in social discourses and movements. Due to this I attempted to cover many stories on the topic and involved myself in activities in the frame of the Mercedes-Benz Madrid Fashion Show.

I also catered to my more experimental side by collaborating as a fashion and beauty stylist for independent short films and directed some pieces of my own, including the 2022 Short Film Fest winner fashion film “El Método Celeste”.

Looking for the key that would expand the understanding of culture and communication it became abundantly clear that new technologies were essential tools for the proper development of media work and education in the humanities in a cosmopolitan scene. I was fascinated to find a natural next step in the Digital Humanities and Culture master program from Trinity College Dublin, an interdisciplinary program that defends the preservation of cultural patrimony and challenges previous views on cultural divulgation.

It is, therefore, my desire to continue to expand my knowledge both in research as well as on a practical level, applying the skills learned in the transition of culture into the digital sphere and supporting its promotion.

Thank you for taking the time to get to know me a bit more. If you wish to know more about my current projects or contact me feel free to email me at valentinadanaus@gmail.com.