The executive Cabinet of Antigua and Barbuda has publicly lauded 16-year-old emerging creative Rodajah Imani, a first-year student in the Visual Arts and Cultural Production program at the Dr Alister Francis Campus of the Antigua and Barbuda College of Advanced Studies (ABCAS), after her original submission took top honors in the official design competition for the custom toss coin set to be used at the 2026 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) cricket match.
Imani was invited to present her full winning design suite directly to the Cabinet assembly, where she received personal commendations from Prime Minister Gaston Browne and every Cabinet member for her exceptional creativity and landmark achievement in a contest purpose-built to highlight the powerful intersection of youth voice, beloved regional cricket heritage, and cross-national Commonwealth solidarity.
Launched in September 2026 exclusively for enrolled ABCAS students, the design contest centered on the official guiding theme “One Commonwealth, One Team”. The selected design will be featured on the official toss coin used to open the signature CHOGM cricket exhibition match, one of the highest-profile community and cultural events scheduled to run alongside the broader intergovernmental CHOGM 2026 proceedings hosted by the twin-island nation.
Every element of Imani’s winning artwork is crafted to weave together distinct threads of local national identity, legendary regional cricketing legacy, and the shared core values that bind the 56 member states of the Commonwealth together. The obverse side of the coin showcases a dynamic batsman figure, drawn from archival reference photos of iconic former West Indies cricket stars Winston Benjamin and Carl Hooper, paired with a traditional cricket wicket and the recognizable silhouette of Antigua and Barbuda’s Shekerley Mountain Range. Additional details including a glowing sun and turquoise ocean pay homage to the islands’ iconic coastal landscape, while engraved text marking the year 2026 and the CHOGM event name grounds the piece in its specific historic context, and a continuous chain of interlocked human figures serves as a visual metaphor for cross-Commonwealth unity, collaborative partnership, and collective inclusive economic growth. The reverse side of the coin carries the same interlinked human figure chain wrapped around the official CHOGM 2026 logo, which incorporates Antigua and Barbuda’s national bird, the frigate bird, alongside engraved inscriptions of the nation’s name and the overarching CHOGM 2026 summit theme: “Accelerating Partnerships & Investment for a Prosperous Commonwealth”.
Imani’s career milestone is particularly remarkable given her young age and early stage of artistic development: her passion for drawing first sparked when she was in Grade 5, and she dedicated herself to refining her technical and conceptual skills more seriously during her third year of secondary school. She has shared that for her, art acts as a powerful, unfiltered medium to communicate personal ideas, vivid imagination, and layered emotion, and that she takes immense pride in turning abstract creative concepts into tangible, finished public-facing designs.
The official production of the custom cricket toss coin is being handled by Vaughtons, a historic UK-based manufacturer with centuries of specialized expertise in high-quality medal and commemorative coin fabrication. Beyond producing the cricket match toss coin, Vaughtons is serving as an official event sponsor for CHOGM 2026 by manufacturing 5,000 limited-edition commemorative summit medals and an additional 180 custom medals marking Antigua and Barbuda’s 45th anniversary of national independence. These commemorative pieces will be distributed to visiting global dignitaries, international summit delegates, and on-site event support personnel throughout the 2026 CHOGM program.
The formal Cabinet recognition extended to Imani signals the Antigua and Barbuda government’s explicit commitment to centering young local creative talent as a core driver of inclusive national development, and its priority of elevating homegrown artistic excellence to a global stage during the high-profile international summit.
Cabinet Congratulates Winner of CHOGM 2026 Cricket Match Coin Design Competition
