Aba A Luke

Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Lin­coln Dou­glas says he aims to change the nar­row view some peo­ple have of cul­ture. Speak­ing with the T&T Guardian pri­or to a re­cent trip to To­ba­go to meet with of­fi­cials of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to dis­cuss ar­eas of cul­tur­al con­cern, the min­is­ter high­light­ed that cul­ture is not lim­it­ed to the ar­ti­facts and fes­ti­vals of a coun­try. "Cul­ture is the way we view our­selves, the way we view our ge­o­graph­i­cal space, the way we view the psy­cho­log­i­cal or emo­tion­al space that is Trinidad and To­ba­go and how we view the peo­ple who in­hab­it that space," he said. He said chang­ing the my­opic mind­set would de­pend on the in­volve­ment of a num­ber of things, in­clud­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in­sti­tu­tion and prac­tice. "First of all we have to de­liv­er to our na­tion, a clear cul­tur­al pol­i­cy," Dou­glas said, not­ing that work has al­ready be­gun on that. He said his team and all cul­tur­al stake­hold­ers will have to work hard at im­ple­ment­ing the things con­tained in the cul­tur­al pol­i­cy.

Time to de­vel­op artistes

Min­is­ter Dou­glas says if work is put in­to de­vel­op­ing the coun­try's artistes and ar­ti­sans, stake­hold­ers can ex­pect a lot more re­turns. "De­vel­op­ment of our artistes in­volves ed­u­ca­tion about arts, about arts man­age­ment, about cul­ture, etc, so ex­pect to see a lot of things that deal with artis­tic de­vel­op­ment in Trinidad and To­ba­go," he said. Re­gard­ing an im­prove­ment in the coun­try's cul­tur­al prod­ucts and ser­vices, the min­is­ter said it is im­por­tant to cre­ate prod­ucts that will be mean­ing­ful to peo­ple glob­al­ly. "Every day we de­cide who we want to be and where we want to go and our sense of space, our un­der­stand­ing...and that is what our cul­ture is and it is out of that, that we are able to make a num­ber of things that the world ap­pre­ci­ates, as the case may be," he said.

Make car­ni­val one prod­uct

Ahead of Car­ni­val 2013, the min­is­ter said he has al­ready met with the di­rec­tors and the chair­men of the NCC and oth­er stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing band­lead­ers and Pan Trin­ba­go. He said dis­cus­sions were held on the role each stake­hold­er will play in the fes­ti­val. "I am clear that some things about the plan­ning of Car­ni­val has to change and there will be some changes both in terms of the lead­er­ship of Car­ni­val and the way Car­ni­val is struc­tured." How­ev­er, he ad­mit­ted there are many things that would have to re­main the same be­cause the fes­ti­val is on­ly six months away. He said cre­at­ing pack­ages suit­able to the Car­ni­val vis­i­tors to T&T, such as fete tick­ets, ac­com­mo­da­tion and trans­porta­tion is nec­es­sary.

"We have to find a way to cre­ate one prod­uct out of the whole Car­ni­val so that when some­one comes here, they're not still try­ing to fig­ure out what to do. We have to fig­ure out a way to make Car­ni­val one event for the peo­ple who come to Trinidad and To­ba­go so that they have easy ac­cess to all the events." Re­gard­ing peo­ple who do take part in Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties, the min­is­ter said they too must be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in or­der to en­cour­age do­mes­tic tourism on the is­land. On the is­sue of ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy with­in his min­istry, Min­is­ter Dou­glas was adamant that peo­ple who re­ceive mon­ey from his min­istry must be able to ac­count for it. Among the things he hopes to ac­com­plish dur­ing his tenure is the com­ple­tion of the steel­pan head­quar­ters in Trinci­ty. Al­so, he said, To­ba­go cul­ture will not be side­lined, as he is open to de­vel­op­men­tal di­a­logue that would lead to the en­rich­ment and en­hance­ment of the cul­tur­al re­sources of the sis­ter isle.