Paula Lin­do

Caribbean peo­ple should share, cher­ish and un­der­stand all as­pects of their sto­ry. This was the un­der­ly­ing mes­sage of the third TEDx Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies event, themed The Caribbean Sto­ry, held on March 17 at UWI, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. TEDx UWI li­cence hold­er, Joshua Ham­let, said the event was in keep­ing with TEDx's 2011 theme, The Art of Sto­ry­telling. The six speak­ers at the event each em­pha­sised a dif­fer­ent as­pect of the Caribbean sto­ry. Christo­pher Castagne said that Caribbean peo­ple don't val­ue cul­ture be­cause artistry and food, such as the steel­pan and ox­tail, are made from dis­card­ed ma­te­ri­als, so we see them as be­ing ex­pend­able and val­ue­less. He said since Caribbean peo­ple on­ly had two de­grees of sep­a­ra­tion be­tween them­selves and every­one else, they took the tal­ent sur­round­ing them for grant­ed. Castagne is a mu­si­cian and mu­sic fes­ti­val or­gan­is­er.

Ian Roy­er, ex­ec­u­tive pro­duc­er of Caribbean's Next Top Mod­el, spoke about brand­ing the Caribbean. His com­pa­ny, which spe­cialis­es in new me­dia, has de­vel­oped a new "love­mark," a next-lev­el brand, for the Caribbean which reads "Caribbean-where your own sto­ry awaits." Roy­er said he de­cid­ed on this be­cause "Caribbean peo­ple ac­cept every­one for who they are." Pro­fes­sor Path­manathan Uma­ha­ran, head of the Co­coa Re­search Unit ques­tioned whether the abil­i­ty of small is­land de­vel­op­ing States in the Caribbean can be­come com­pet­i­tive on a glob­al scale. He opined that the prob­lems fac­ing the Caribbean could be over­come by con­cen­trat­ing on unique high val­ue prod­ucts, cit­ing the ex­port­ing of our scor­pi­on pep­per, the hottest in the world, and its by-prod­ucts as an ex­am­ple.

Rudy­lynn De Four Roberts of Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion iden­ti­fies our ar­chi­tec­ture as part of our cul­ture. Not just the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en and sim­i­lar build­ings, but al­so the tapia hous­es and oth­er struc­tures in which we eat, live and pray. Roberts said we should pre­serve, re­store and re­ha­bil­i­tate ex­am­ples of these struc­tures so that they can be used to teach fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. Per­for­mances at the event high­light­ed lo­cal tal­ent. These in­clud­ed a po­em en­ti­tled Can­boulay Ri­ots Part II by spo­ken word po­et Gary Acos­ta, an in­ter­pre­tive dance piece by the Dance Col­lec­tive and the song Do What You Have to Do by lo­cal band In­vic­tus 7, who used tabla drums, a cu­a­tro and a steel­pan to ac­com­pa­ny the lead singer.