A panel was recently convened by Government to come up with "innovative cultural projects." I was asked but declined to participate. Those things generally boil down to egos jostling, time wasted, nothing getting done. However, since politicians seem to take on newspaper col-umns more than panels, it's worth some ink. This is especially important now since culture, appropriately deployed, has the poten- tial to bring some clarity in the habitually chaotic, and rapidly degenerating national discourse. Trinidadian "cultural" enterprises are plagued by several congenital defects, starting from ini- tial assumptions that "de culture" is inherently creative, economically viable, and that innovation and creativity can grow in a government greenhouse. None of this is true. Then there's the problem that "culture" is inextricably linked to Carnival. The Government has railroaded itself into going along with the inaccurate premise that Carnival is economically viable. So, using political logic, they (must) assume other areas of "culture," about which they know nothing, are economically viable.
Of Carnival/culture's economic viability, discussed in this space months ago, the evidence suggests the opposite. Of its creativity there is nothing so mundane as "evidence," merely loud pronouncements. As for the nation's general creativity, while there seems to be an inordinate number of Trinidadians who (have) achieved great things (James, Best, Padmore, Naipaul, Eugene Chen and so on), we neglect to ask how many of those were from pre-independence; how many lived, and live, in Trinidad today; how many are under 40; and how many were encouraged by state cultural policy? (CLR James, for example, was run out of the country, and arrested when he returned.) From what I've seen in 20 years studying local culture, creativity and talent are actively weeded out and stifled by governments. And this includes UWI, which is effectively a department of the State's apparat. What the culture (institutions, and people who control them) desires is replication. Many cultural institutions are controlled by a few people who consider them their private property. To them, innovation is poison. Their lives depend on things staying the same. And these are the people governments listen to. Proof of this is to be found in the billions spent on Carnival, and UWI's and UTT's degrees in arts management, theatre, Carnival, and so on. And we can all see how well that's worked.
The Indian/Hindu culture-attempts at Ramleela revivals, and scholarship, and so on-is identical. Indo culture here is a faint memory of 200-year-old peasant rituals which have nothing to do with contemporary Indian culture, or contemporary anything. The local posture to the Ramayana amounts to reading an epic poem as dogma-not as literature. Alternative proposals are treated as "attacks" and "disrespect." But this doesn't stop others from appreciating it as such: a fascinating version of the Ramayana, Sita Sings the Blues (www.sitasingstheblues.com), was done by an American, Nina Paley, which illustrates my point.
Sita was done using US grant money. But direct funding for the arts (in the limited ways it's been tried) has also failed here. As I've pointed out, CCA7 in the mid-1990s gobbled an enormous amount of money from local and international sources and produced very little. This sounds depressing. But the failures have left a series of caveats which should be observed in order for anything like this to succeed.
They are as follows:
1 Politicians really don't want innovation. They claim to want critical thinking and innovation, but do everything to sabotage them. Creative thinkers and innovators say and do things Pooran the politician or Charley the church-guy will find offensive. This doesn't mean everyone saying offensive things should be listened to, but "yes-men" advisers and experts are a recipe for failure.
2 Big mouths and pushiness do not mean competence. Once someone on a panel has been/is on several other similar panels, you're heading in the wrong direction. All "panels" and so on till now have failed. Why keep asking the same people?
3 Get the right people: Who is dem? The depressing answer is "no one known to politicians." This is because of what economists call "crowding out" or what I call "ignorant, greedy louts making sure no one gets in on their 'turf.'" All the people who could have done better than the present "culture experts" have been frustrated into withdrawal.
The best example of all this made real is the UTT's Academy of the Arts. It was started to do innovative research in culture, entrepreneurship and so on-similar to what's being proposed now. But it failed, because all the caveats above were ignored. Ken Ramchand, a UWI retiree, was put in charge. He promptly pulled his pals in to advise, and other retirees from UWI (among others) to do "research" they hadn't done in decades at UWI. Weren't there any young scholars with new ideas? I'm glad you asked that.
The focus of the academy is/ was "Hidden Cultures." This was an "appropriation" of my doctoral thesis (The Hidden History of Trinidad-Underground Culture 1870-1970). If an institution designed to foster innovation's first act is to "borrow" someone else's idea (without permission), this is a bad sign. To my knowledge, little has been produced in the academy's six years-I know of a picture book on Golconda. The thing is, predictably, now the Carnival Academy, and Ramchand is now chairman. The UTT Web site is very short on information-like on publications, and research fellows. Only six fellows are listed, but I know of other people who are/have been there. Commission of inquiry, anyone? (Disclosure: I applied for a research fellowship at UTT-I don't expect to get it.) So, to conclude: Any government-sponsored "cultural innovation" initiative is likely to fail. But there are alternatives.
To be continued