Charles Kong Soo

The es­tab­lish­ment of an in­sti­tute to cap­ture the mem­o­ries of T&T's cul­tur­al past, present and fu­ture for pos­ter­i­ty will be ben­e­fi­cial to cit­i­zens, says Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston 'Gyp­sy' Pe­ters. "Re­mem­ber­ing as a peo­ple is very im­por­tant to the sur­vival of a cul­ture," he said. "Our shared her­itage cre­ates a col­lec­tive un­der­stand­ing of who we are as Trin­bag­o­ni­ans." Pe­ters was speak­ing at the Min­istry's Re­mem­ber When In­sti­tute Web page launch and ex­hib­it at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) Port-of-Spain on Sep­tem­ber 9. "The Min­istry owns a store­house of in­tan­gi­ble arte­facts which re­flects di­rect­ly, an im­age of our­selves as we have lived over the past forty years," Pe­ters said.

"Dur­ing the past two-and-a-half years, the Di­vi­sion of Cul­ture has been digi­tis­ing this ma­te­r­i­al that will one day be stored in our pro­posed Re­mem­ber When In­sti­tute." He said the ex­hib­it and Web page were two in­stru­ments that would ed­u­cate T&T cit­i­zens on their past and in­spire nos­tal­gia for many. "This ex­hib­it that we will launch to­day will in­tro­duce to you, our na­tion's hu­man trea­sures," Pe­ters said. "This is ma­te­r­i­al that we deem valu­able to our past, present and fu­ture." The ex­hib­it, Re­mem­ber Our Com­mu­ni­ties and Peo­ple, Our Mu­sic, Our Lit­er­a­ture, Our Folk Tra­di­tions, the Evo­lu­tion of the Steel­pan and the Tapia Move­ment, com­prised of mu­sic and cul­tur­al icons, arte­facts, in­stru­ments, art, jour­nals, books, news­pa­pers, folk­lore songs and sto­ries and bod­ies of work in their re­spec­tive fields.

"This elec­tron­ic space pro­vides a store-house of ma­te­r­i­al and doc­u­ments from our past," he said. "It is un­like any oth­er cul­tur­al E-based repos­i­to­ry in T&T." Pe­ters said the trea­sures it stored were the doc­u­men­taries of the for­mer Na­tion­al Cul­tur­al Coun­cil. "This page car­ries a com­pi­la­tion of sev­er­al note­wor­thy pieces of cul­tur­al ma­te­r­i­al," he said. "De­rived from thou­sands of au­dio-vi­su­al ma­te­r­i­al, man­u­scripts and pho­tographs, these record­ings can be found nowhere else in the world. Eat your heart out Smith­son­ian!" The Web page, he said, would be open to the pub­lic in three months time. Among the guests were Venezue­lan am­bas­sador Maria Mar­cano, vet­er­an ca­lyp­son­ian Dr Hol­lis "Chalk­dust" Liv­er­pool, his­to­ri­ans Brid­get Br­ere­ton and Michael An­tho­ny, play­wright Fred­die Kissoon, ac­tor/artis­tic di­rec­tor of the Trinidad and To­ba­go The­atre Work­shop Al­bert Le Veau and sto­ry-teller Paul Keens-Dou­glas.

The ex­hi­bi­tion was opened to the gen­er­al pub­lic from Sep­tem­ber 10, and will run un­til Sep­tem­ber 24 from 9 am to 5 pm on Mon­days to Fri­days, and 10 am to 6 pm on week­ends.