Zahra Gor­don

Screen prints of pho­tos of the his­toric Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en build­ings around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain will be the fo­cus of an Ex­port Cen­tres Co Ltd (EC­CL) show­case at the Hy­att Re­gency to­mor­row. EC­CL chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Hansen Nar­i­nesingh says the prints are priced at $2,500 and mon­ey from sales will go di­rect­ly to ar­ti­sans who cre­at­ed the works in EC­CL train­ing pro­grammes. The prints were cre­at­ed ear­li­er this year in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Guis­so 86, a print­ing com­pa­ny in La Hor­quet­ta, Ari­ma. Nar­i­nesingh said he was sure the EC­CL board would con­sid­er mak­ing some kind of con­tri­bu­tion to the restora­tion of the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en, al­though they had not made such a de­ci­sion. The build­ings are Am­bard's House (Roomor), Arch­bish­op's House, Hayes Court, Mille Fleurs, Queen's Roy­al Col­lege, Stollmey­er's Cas­tle and White­hall.

Arch­bish­op's House (which is owned by the RC Church) and Stollmey­er's Cas­tle are un­der­go­ing ren­o­va­tions and Queen's Roy­al Col­lege was re­stored in 2010, but three of the build­ings are in dis­re­pair. The prints de­pict the build­ings in the days be­fore their de­te­ri­o­ra­tion. In April, con­ser­va­tion­ists gath­ered out­side Mille Fleurs, leav­ing flow­ers at the gate, in an ef­fort to en­cour­age the Gov­ern­ment to fast-track its restora­tion. White­hall, Stollmey­er's Cas­tle, Mille Fleurs and QRC are owned by the Gov­ern­ment and the oth­er build­ings are pri­vate­ly owned. The Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) is re­spon­si­ble for restor­ing Mille Fleurs, which has a de­te­ri­o­rat­ing roof and oth­er ma­jor in­fra­struc­tur­al prob­lems. The user brief for Mille Fleurs is be­ing re-eval­u­at­ed, af­ter which the restora­tion project will be pub­licly ten­dered, Ude­cott of­fi­cials said. A press re­lease sent out by the EC­CL said: "The launch is sym­bol­ic of our cul­tur­al her­itage and its main ob­jec­tive is to cre­ate greater ex­po­sure and aware­ness among the re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al di­as­po­ra of these sev­en build­ings and their place in our na­tion's his­to­ry."

Rudy­lynn Roberts, pres­i­dent of Cit­i­zens for Con­ser­va­tion, said the Mag­nif­i­cent Sev­en build­ings were not ap­pre­ci­at­ed for their artistry. She hopes the im­ages will push peo­ple to ad­vo­cate for grants to be made avail­able for restora­tion projects. "If they are do­ing some­thing that draws at­ten­tion to the build­ings, that's great, but they need to draw the at­ten­tion that the build­ings need," she said. "They don't just need to fix them, but use them in a prop­er man­ner where they would be able to sup­port their own main­te­nance." Roberts said the build­ings were tourist at­trac­tions and should be kept in a con­di­tion that would make cit­i­zens proud. The EC­CL is a state agency un­der the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment man­dat­ed to "re­vi­talise the lo­cal craft in­dus­try." Nar­i­nesingh said EC­CL tar­get­ed min­istries, ho­tels, and the diplo­mat­ic corps for their event, in­tend­ing that pur­chas­es would be made from these sec­tors. Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters will de­liv­er the keynote ad­dress at the launch, but could not be reached for com­ment on the restora­tion ini­tia­tive.