Cherisse Moe

For years stake­hold­ers in the cre­ative in­dus­try have com­plained of get­ting the rot­ten end of the stick when it came to Gov­ern­ment sup­port and fund­ing.And af­ter last Mon­day's 2011/2012 Na­tion­al Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion many lament that not much has changed.The mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar fis­cal pack­age de­liv­ered by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an gave a com­pre­hen­sive overview of how the pub­lic's purse would be spent over the com­ing year.Dook­er­an al­lo­cat­ed a to­tal of $543.5M to the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al sec­tor, a not­ed in­crease from last year when the sec­tor re­ceived $370M.He an­nounced sev­er­al ini­tia­tives which he said would pro­mote T&T's mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­ety.

Some of those ini­tia­tives in­clud­ed the es­tab­lish­ment of the Re­mem­ber When In­sti­tute to fa­cil­i­tate and man­age the House of Mu­sic, the Evo­lu­tion of the Steel Pan Ex­hi­bi­tion, the recre­ation of Port-of-Spain as a Mu­se­um City and the Mu­sic School in the Pan Yard Project to train par­tic­i­pants in mu­sic lit­er­a­cy.Dook­er­an said the Gov­ern­ment was con­fi­dent that the projects would safe­guard T&T's tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge and fa­cil­i­tate mean­ing­ful con­tri­bu­tion "to an archive of in­dige­nous cul­ture and folk­lore for our cit­i­zens."How­ev­er, some in the cre­ative sec­tor are not as op­ti­mistic.They say more needs to be done to de­vel­op the in­dus­try which they state has yet to re­alise its full po­ten­tial.

Not se­ri­ous

Sec­re­tary of Pan Trin­ba­go Richard Forteau said while he wel­comed the Mu­sic School in the Pan Yard Project, T&T was still be­hind the rest of the world when it came to pro­mot­ing the steel­pan.He said al­though the as­so­ci­a­tion had called on the Gov­ern­ment to es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Pan Pol­i­cy since 1980, it con­tin­ues to wait in vain 31 years lat­er."We in T&T not se­ri­ous about cul­ture, it's just some­thing we just say in pass­ing."And with a crit­i­cal short­age of drums to make steel­pans now cre­at­ing "all sorts of prob­lems" for pan­men, Forteau called on the au­thor­i­ties to get its act to­geth­er."We've been hear­ing about the quest of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and we know there's a role for the steel­pan to play. Pan Trin­ba­go feels that it should fall un­der a num­ber of min­istries not just the Arts. Peo­ple brand us as the as­so­ci­a­tion to host Panora­ma but we can be so much more."

Pro­gres­sive agen­das

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments was pres­i­dent of the Artists Coali­tion of T&T, Rubadiri Vic­tor, who as­sert­ed that de­vel­op­ing the cre­ative sec­tor should be on the Gov­ern­ment's front burn­er.Vic­tor said when it came to the Gov­ern­ment's ful­fil­ment of promis­es to the in­dus­try, he was adopt­ing a wait and see ap­proach."I can't make a full com­ment be­cause I need to see more de­tails. The ex­pert pan­el got a very com­pre­hen­sive plan for the sec­tor which was ap­proved by the Plan­ning Min­is­ter. On­ly some of those pro­vi­sions were an­nounced in the bud­get but there are things that can­not work in iso­la­tion.What we're hop­ing is that the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) con­tains more in­for­ma­tion about the things not men­tioned," he stat­ed."How­ev­er, one of the pro­vi­sions read wasn't la­belled prop­er­ly and it might be one of the rev­o­lu­tion­ary things we asked for-the cre­ation of an Arts Coun­cil, which will be the ve­hi­cle for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of pro­gres­sive agen­das for cul­ture. This is what Pat Bish­op died for."Vic­tor said while the sec­tor cur­rent­ly con­tributed about $1.9B to the econ­o­my, it could eas­i­ly be con­tribut­ing about $6B an­nu­al­ly if "ba­sic things were put in­to place."He added, "It can em­pow­er tens of thou­sands but those things re­quire po­lit­i­cal courage and re­sources."

Cul­ture Min­istry:We're try­ing

Mean­while, Cul­tur­al Of­fi­cer, Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­istry, Pe­ter Telfer, said the Min­istry was "do­ing its best" to pro­mote T&T's cul­ture to the world."While I can­not com­ment of­fi­cial­ly I can say the min­is­ter (Win­ston Pe­ters) is re­al­ly try­ing and the min­istry is do­ing a lot to take cul­ture to new lev­els. The fact that the Gov­ern­ment made cul­ture a min­istry in its own en­ti­ty is a sign that he wants to do more for cul­ture for the ben­e­fit of the peo­ple."Telfer, co-or­di­na­tor of the Mawasi Ex­pe­ri­ence Cul­tur­al Group, said the min­istry al­so planned to use the cre­ative in­dus­try to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my as it "saw its po­ten­tial."He said, "The jour­ney has start­ed and we will build on what has gone be­fore. It is not 'div-first-ifi­ca­tion' but di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. It's the coun­try which must come first."