Wes­ley Gib­bings

Last Sat­ur­day, UTT chair­man, Prof Ken Julien took to the UTT stage at NA­PA with­out a mu­si­cal in­stru­ment in hand and he, quite mer­ci­ful­ly, was not pre­pared to sing. He in­stead came armed with the sim­ple mes­sage that not un­like the many oth­er na­tion­al bud­get line items that had been "sub­ject to deep cuts," the uni­ver­si­ty has not been spared.

Now, why would the dec­o­rat­ed en­er­gy czar and en­gi­neer by train­ing be mak­ing such a point at a fo­rum such as this? He went fur­ther to urge a hushed au­di­ence that what the uni­ver­si­ty's Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (APA) has been do­ing over the years has been "very im­por­tant for our de­vel­op­ment" and "we need to be able to say to the Gov­ern­ment that what we do goes be­yond teach­ing."

"We are fill­ing a gap that Trinidad bad­ly needs (fill­ing)," Prof Julien said.

It might be that as a schol­ar in­ti­mate­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with en­gi­neer­ing and the ap­plied sci­ences he has tak­en a sim­i­lar con­cern to UTT's Unit for Project Man­age­ment and Civ­il In­fra­struc­ture Sys­tems or to can­di­dates pur­su­ing the Mas­ters in En­vi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence and Man­age­ment

out of an abun­dance of con­cern for their sur­viv­abil­i­ty inthese times.

If not? Why not?

Could it be that Prof Julien's in­ter­pre­ta­tion of Fi­nance Min­is­ter and fel­low en­gi­neer Colm Im­bert's bud­get state­ment that the Gov­ern­ment plans to tar­get for GATE sup­port "fund­ing of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion (based) on the coun­try's de­vel­op­ment needs" was such that he felt that the APA might be­come more vul­ner­a­ble than oth­er ar­eas of uni­ver­si­ty ac­tiv­i­ty when it came to wider fi­nan­cial sup­port?

Or maybe it is that his ex­pe­ri­ence in the world of acad­e­mia has taught him that un­like en­gi­neer­ing and math­e­mat­ics, when it comes to the arts, two plus two al­ways has the po­ten­tial to ex­ceed four or five or six. And he is in fact sound­ing a warn­ing to the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion that the "gap" to be filled is as ur­gent and as im­por­tant for the de­vel­op­ment process as the ar­eas in which the Gov­ern­ment front bench has the most pro­fes­sion­al ex­pe­ri­ence.

The fact is, over sev­er­al years, the APA has been re­spon­si­ble for pre­sent­ing to T&T au­di­ences high-cal­i­bre (and free) en­ter­tain­ment in the ar­eas of mu­sic, dra­ma and dance–in­spir­ing the young and ed­i­fy­ing the more ma­ture. I don't think any­one would mind if a small door charge is im­posed.

It is not good to com­pare these things, but hav­ing cov­ered and re­viewed many of these events, par­tic­u­lar­ly the mu­sic and dra­ma per­for­mances, I would con­tend that UTT has now over­tak­en the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) as the place you turn to as a cit­i­zen with an in­ter­est in these im­por­tant foun­da­tions of our de­vel­op­ment.

It is true that out of the De­part­ment of Cre­ative and Fes­ti­val Arts at UWI has emerged some of our finest young tal­ents on the mu­sic, vi­su­al arts, dance and dra­ma scenes, while the Film Pro­gramme at St Au­gus­tine has inar­guably done more for cre­ative ex­pres­sion in film than any oth­er fa­cil­i­ty in the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean. But it might al­so be that, like Ken Julien, UWI prin­ci­pal Prof Bri­an Copeland is de­liv­er­ing sim­i­lar ad­vi­sories over there. I don't know. I am just guess­ing.

But the UTT Acad­e­my is, as far as I am con­cerned, with­out par­al­lel in terms of the cre­ative out­puts we have wit­nessed on the mu­sic and dra­ma stages in re­cent years and this in­cludes oth­er high­ly-tout­ed and pro­mot­ed pro­fes­sion­al pro­duc­tions.

I will take the licks for al­so con­tend­ing that UTT has en­sured that its APA pro­duc­tions are ac­ces­si­ble and me­dia-friend­ly and there ap­pears to be a con­sci­en­tious in­sti­tu­tion­al at­tempt to reach out to the wider pop­u­la­tion. When, for ex­am­ple, the Acad­e­my took Adam Wal­ters' Riv­er of Free­dom to Moru­ga last year, the com­mu­ni­ty pride and own­er­ship of the pro­duc­tion was heart-warm­ing and sig­nif­i­cant. The Acad­e­my al­so made the SAPA fa­cil­i­ty its home for some time.

It is mean­while clear that some folks at UWI still be­lieve that the in­sti­tu­tion re­mains "a fortress to be breached" and I am aware of the bat­tles be­ing fought by in­ter­nal ad­vo­cates for a far more open en­vi­ron­ment for com­mu­ni­ty en­gage­ment of cam­pus ac­tiv­i­ties. The Bo­cas Lit Fest–the coun­try's pre­mier lit­er­ary fes­ti­val with which UWI is as­so­ci­at­ed as a spon­sor–would hope­ful­ly not al­so fall un­der the loom­ing cut­lass.

In the de­vel­oped world, the arts are sup­port­ed and pro­mot­ed as a na­tion­al good with eco­nom­ic val­ue, an im­por­tant source for cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­va­tion and an en­nobling as­set that helps peo­ple to ap­pre­ci­ate ideas, cre­ativ­i­ty and beau­ty.

In T&T, the vast po­ten­tial of these ar­eas of hu­man en­deav­our con­sti­tute a gap to be filled not as a last re­sort but as a pre-emp­tive strike on de­struc­tion, dis­or­der and de­spair.

Julien's is good ad­vice that should not be ig­nored. At one time im­por­tant peo­ple lis­tened to him. Let's see if they still do.