Sean Nero

Prin­ci­pal of the St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies Prof Clement Sankat says the steel­pan, as the biggest man­i­fes­ta­tion of T&T's cre­ativ­i­ty, needs a fund to sup­port its growth and in­ge­nu­ity.

Speak­ing at Tues­day's open­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Pan and Panora­ma (ICP) at Queen's Hall, St Ann's, Sankat said: "Some of our cre­ative minds con­tin­ue to con­duct cut­ting-edge re­search and in­no­va­tion and use their cre­ativ­i­ty for prod­uct de­vel­op­ment and man­u­fac­tur­ing of the steel­pan. Pro­fes­sor Bri­an Copeland and Pro­fes­sor Clement Im­bert, both from the Fac­ul­ty of En­gi­neer­ing, have worked to­geth­er to cre­ate the Steel­pan De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre right here in our uni­ver­si­ty and in our coun­try."

He said the con­fer­ence theme, To­wards the Glob­al­i­sa­tion and De­vel­op­ment of the Steel­pan, had spe­cial sig­nif­i­cance for the uni­ver­si­ty be­cause its fac­ul­ty and stu­dents con­tin­ue to do con­sid­er­able work to ad­vance the mu­si­cal in­stru­ment. Sankat praised Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Kei­th Di­az and said UWI looked for­ward to work­ing with the steel­band body on a man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty for which a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing has al­ready been signed.

He said the UWI's at­ten­tion to the steel­pan went even fur­ther as it pro­vides ed­u­ca­tion in steel­pan play­ing, ar­rang­ing and con­duct­ing through its De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts un­der the lead­er­ship of Jes­sel Mur­ray.

"In ad­di­tion, the UWI has al­so con­tributed to­wards the es­tab­lish­ment of the Na­tion­al Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Stan­dards in Pan Con­struc­tion, the stan­dard­i­s­a­tion of the steel­pan ter­mi­nol­o­gy, as well as the pro­mo­tion of the steel­pan around the world through the es­tab­lish­ment of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights, which must un­der­pin the com­mer­cial suc­cess of any in­no­va­tion," Sankat said.

"We have been do­ing very im­por­tant work in this area and we have had great ex­pe­ri­ences in the last sev­er­al years. I wish to note that it is a pri­or­i­ty for UWI to con­tin­u­ous­ly raise the knowl­edge, aware­ness and pos­si­bil­i­ties in­clud­ing cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­va­tion of this out­stand­ing in­stru­ment.

"And, it is with­in this con­text that we are tru­ly pleased to be as­so­ci­at­ed with this con­fer­ence which en­cap­su­lates all that is nec­es­sary to make the steel­pan a world-class in­stru­ment recog­nised in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. With­out your par­tic­i­pa­tion, this con­fer­ence will not be a suc­cess, as your par­tic­i­pa­tion will en­sure the fu­ture suc­cess of the pan through more cre­ativ­i­ty, through knowl­edge trans­fer and hope­ful­ly a new en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it will take hold in terms of how the pan would go for­ward."