After 15 years of work, thought and practice, Dr Suzanne Burke launched her book, Policing the Transnational: Cultural Policy Development in the Anglophone Caribbean (1962-2008), on August 20, at The Village Hall, Hotel Normandie, St Ann's. Burke, who earned her doctorate in Sociology at Essex University in the UK, co-ordinates the Arts and Cultural Enterprise Management (ACEM) programme at the University of the West Indies in St Augustine. Her work focuses on the Caribbean cultural industries and cultural policy development.
At Friday's launch, after a performance of Merchant's Caribbean Connection and a poetry reading by some of Burke's 2010-2011 ACEM students, MC Yvonne Weekes introduced the first speaker, artist Steve Ouditt.?
Ouditt focused on T&T's cultural space, referring to local newspapers, and bemoaned what he felt was a lack of "contemporiety" in institutionally endorsed art and architecture. He said some of the most innovative locally produced work seemed "invisible" in the face of overwhelming "cultural orthodoxy"–in spite of the fact that buzzwords like "thinking outside the box" and "entrepreneurship" were ubiquitous. Creative Arts Director Rawle Gibbons read from and reviewed the book. He said it managed to be both "academic and urgent," and said it called for stakeholders to "focus on culture as the fulcrum for the economic repositioning of the Caribbean." Gibbons said the book–with its review of cultural policy in the post-independence era in the Caribbean, examination of the development of international cultural policy, and case studies on the arts and cultural industries–represented valuable research that would be important to academics, arts educators, policy makers, activists and entertainers and cultural entrepreneurs.
Gibbons called Burke's book "proficient and discursive" but questioned the fact that it omitted a study of calypso. He used the artform himself to illustrate what he said was the book's main message, the need for greater "cultural confidence" and innovation in the region.
He sang Stalin's lyrics: "if I did know, I woulda hold on to mih steel band and calypso," and Bomber's words: "why neglect your own culture?" to bring his point home. He closed by saying the work "moves us beyond perception and practice to the paradigm of policy," and urged the guests present–"Buy it."?During her discourse, after a spoken-word piece by ACEM alumna Glenda Rose Lane, Burke said her experience–working with YTEPP, as IDECO's first general manager and as marketing manager for Panland steel pan manufacturing company–had led her to question why, despite the region's "infinite cultural resource" the sector continued to languish.
�Dr Suzanne Burke, left, applauds a performance by ACEM students at the launch of her book, Policing the Transnational: Cultural Policy Development in the Anglophone Caribbean (1962-2008), at Normandie Hotel last Friday.
She said she felt the answer must lie in what we collectively believe about ourselves, and felt that an examination of policy–our official positions and our actual practice–would reflect the truth. She found that little research had been done in the area and that little of the region's cultural policy had been recorded. She said in terms of government administration, "'Culture' was often attached to other ministries as a kind of afterthought," she said, "leading to what she called "a state of sustained ad-hocism" and persistent underdevelopment in the area. The region's cultural policy development, she said, had not taken into consideration the trans-national quality of Caribbean life, with its rich Diasporal movement.
Burke also described consistent gaps between what arts practitioners felt was needed to build cultural industries and technocrats' ideas of how to approach culture, citing NAPA as a prime example. She said stakeholders must pursue a "strategic global repositioning" of the region, with culture at its heart.
