Roslyn Car­ring­ton

If there's one thing you can say about Caribbean peo­ple, it's that we're cre­ative. Car­ni­val and pan are ready ex­am­ples of our abil­i­ty to cre­ate breath­tak­ing, soul-stir­ring sights and sounds, seem­ing­ly out of thin air. As the re­cent­ly held NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest proved, the lit­er­ary mar­ket in T&T is brim­ming with books by fresh, bright new au­thors who de­serve their mo­ment in the sun. For that mat­ter, just lis­ten to a man try­ing to ex­plain to his boss why he's turned up di­shev­elled, late for work and look­ing guilty as sin...that is mas­ter sto­ry-telling at its finest! But how do we go about find­ing and ap­pre­ci­at­ing the art, craft, mu­sic and oth­er cre­ative won­ders that flow from our peo­ple? How do you de­vel­op a true ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the arts?

Don't be a cul­ture vul­ture

Snob­bery is un­cool, but artis­tic snob­bery-be­ing a pre­ten­tious, ob­nox­ious know-it-all flit­ting around art gal­leries com­plain­ing about the poor qual­i­ty of the wine and loud­ly ex­press­ing your opin­ion (usu­al­ly deroga­to­ry) about the pieces on the walls-will make you look like a pompous you-know-what. Ap­proach art with hu­mil­i­ty; try to find some­thing of val­ue in each piece, each per­for­mance, even if you don't like it. Re­mem­ber, some­one put their heart and soul in­to it. Ap­pre­ci­ate that, if noth­ing else.

Go grass­roots

Big gal­leries are won­der­ful places to view the works of some of our best artists, and con­cert halls are great places to en­joy our more ex­pe­ri­enced per­form­ers. But lit­tle hide­aways, jazz clubs, and am­a­teur nights are full of undis­cov­ered gems you're sure to love. Vis­it craft fairs and mar­kets. Pa­tro­n­ise lo­cal ar­ti­sans so they will have the re­sources-and en­cour­age­ment-to keep pro­duc­ing.

Shift your par­a­digms

Can't get enough of im­pres­sion­ist art? Go see the works of a sur­re­al­ist in­stead. If you like pot­tery, go check out a fab­ric artist. A fan of the clas­sics? Find out when the Rap­so artists are hav­ing their next open mike night. Try­ing some­thing new doesn't mean you love what you love any less. And who knows, you might dis­cov­er a taste for spicy stuff when you had a sweet tooth all along.

Em­brace what is yours

With glob­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­ing what it is, the on­ly way to es­cape the re­lent­less cul­tur­al colo­nial­ism of first-world West­ern coun­tries is to build a bon­fire made of TVs, cell phones, lap­tops and tablets. Our con­cept of what is 'good art' is coloured by peo­ple who didn't grow up here. Don't let any­one else tell you what is art, what sounds good, what or who is pret­ty. Open up to all the good lo­cal art, mu­sic and dra­ma that's pro­duced by us, about us, for us. Know, and love, your­self.