Sean Nero

The na­tion­al mu­si­cal in­stru­ment of T&T–the steel­pan–has the po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate tremen­dous for­eign ex­change for T&T, yet the in­dus­try re­mains un­tapped, Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas has said.

He said the over­sight would be ad­dressed by the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led gov­ern­ment, which recog­nised the im­por­tance of the steel­band sec­tor in terms of the sheer num­bers of peo­ple in­volved, both di­rect­ly and in­di­rect­ly, in the sec­tor, in terms of job cre­ation and its con­tri­bu­tion to in­come gen­er­a­tion by the cul­tur­al and cre­ative sec­tor.

Speak­ing be­fore a glob­al au­di­ence at Tues­day's launch of the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on the Pan and Panora­ma at Queen's Hall, St Ann's, Port-of-Spain, Dou­glas said hav­ing vis­it­ed many pa­n­yards dur­ing his tenure as min­is­ter he was al­ways pleased to ex­pe­ri­ence the pride with which pan play­ers con­duct­ed their busi­ness.

He added: "Each year, the Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism dis­burs­es mil­lions of dol­lars in grants to sup­port over 100 un­spon­sored steel­bands.

"This is not done sim­ply to sup­port this lo­cal tra­di­tion­al art­form, but al­so to en­cour­age the mi­cro-econ­o­my that ex­ists in each pa­n­yard and, most im­por­tant­ly, to in­vest in the de­vel­op­ment of the bur­geon­ing and lu­cra­tive steel­pan in­dus­try," he said.

"The steel­pan is one of our most vi­able in­come gen­er­a­tors for the sec­tor. In 2008, the val­ue of steel­pan ex­ports from T&T was es­ti­mat­ed at $4 mil­lion.

"This fig­ure in­creas­es an­nu­al­ly. Pan in­stru­ments are there­fore the largest mer­chan­dise ex­port in the cul­tur­al and cre­ative sec­tor.

"There is cur­rent­ly a large­ly un­tapped mar­ket for the ex­port of the na­tion­al (mu­si­cal) in­stru­ment and nu­mer­ous op­por­tu­ni­ties for pan play­ers, tuners, in­no­va­tors, arrangers and man­u­fac­tures.

"Es­tab­lished steel­bands can now be found in al­most every con­ti­nent on the globe from Aus­tralia to South Africa to Den­mark to Cana­da."

In a de­lib­er­ate ef­fort to boost the cre­ative sec­tor lo­cal­ly, said the min­is­ter, and in par­tic­u­lar the steel­pan in­dus­try, the min­istry in­sti­tut­ed sev­er­al projects that tar­get­ed sev­er­al cru­cial ar­eas.

Through its part­ner­ship with the De­Vos In­sti­tute of the Arts Man­age­ment at the Kennedy Cen­tre of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca key mem­bers of lead­ing na­tion­al arts and cul­tur­al or­gan­i­sa­tions gained in­valu­able train­ing that was specif­i­cal­ly craft­ed and tar­get­ed out­fits of this ilk, he said.

Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the sta­bil­i­ty of the emerg­ing sec­tor, Dou­glas said pa­n­yard reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion was a vi­tal step in that di­rec­tion.

He added: "Mu­sic skills and man­age­ment train­ing, while key to the de­vel­op­ment of the steel­pan sec­tor, are not on­ly seg­ments of the steel­pan ecosys­tem that re­quire at­ten­tion. The pa­n­yard, this place of cre­ative ex­pres­sion, the birth­place of the coun­try's most renowned in­no­va­tion, has tra­di­tion­al­ly been the cen­tre of our com­mu­ni­ties.

"In recog­ni­tion of the ad­van­tages that so­ci­ety re­ceives from the mere ex­is­tence of the pa­n­yard, the Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism is pur­su­ing the Pa­n­yard Reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion Project.

"With the as­sis­tance of Pan Trin­ba­go, we are work­ing with the Min­istry of Land and Ma­rine Re­sources to fa­cil­i­tate the for­mal­i­sa­tion of the own­er­ship of lands oc­cu­pied by steel­pan bands. The project is fo­cused on more than 220 Pan Trin­ba­go mem­ber bands."