The En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­search In­sti­tute Char­lot­teville (ER­IC) part­nered with gift­ed artists from North East To­ba­go and the Spey­side High School to ho­n­our the is­land’s cul­tur­al and nat­ur­al her­itage.

Now on pub­lic dis­play along the roads are works of Ja­son Need, Tom­ley Roberts, Earl Man­swell, Avion Orr, Chris Thomas, Coryse Wright, Ja­son Thomas, Is­rael Melville, and Quis­hang Ja­cob.

A re­lease from the En­vi­ron­men­tal Re­search In­sti­tute Char­lot­teville stat­ed that 11 paint­ings will be in­stalled on Au­gust 29, ready for In­de­pen­dence cel­e­bra­tions, four more, as well as sev­er­al ter­res­tri­al and ma­rine sculp­tures will fol­low be­fore the end of the year.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, North­east To­ba­go’s nat­ur­al and cul­tur­al her­itage is a na­tion­al lega­cy that all To­bag­o­ni­ans are proud of and re­spect and pro­tec­tion of this her­itage is strong­ly linked to the sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic, so­cial and cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment of To­ba­go’s com­mu­ni­ties.

Quishang Jacob, Pollinator

It not­ed that com­mu­ni­ty-based tourism di­rect­ly brings in­come to mi­cro and small busi­ness­es and sup­ports the liveli­hoods of many fam­i­lies.

The North­east To­ba­go Art Route is ex­pect­ed to be an aes­thet­ic and long-last­ing re­minder for the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers as well as vis­i­tors that To­ba­go’s out­stand­ing cul­tur­al and nat­ur­al her­itage is of glob­al sig­nif­i­cance and very much worth­while of pro­tec­tion and sus­tain­able use.

“The us­age of fine art, is part of the pur­ple econ­o­my, to high­light con­ser­va­tion and cul­ture is part of the ini­tia­tives im­ple­ment­ed un­der the North-East To­ba­go UN­ESCO Man and the Bios­phere Pro­gramme and we hope that this first step will ig­nite fur­ther sup­port to a flour­ish­ing art move­ment in To­ba­go,” the re­lease said.

The in­ter­na­tion­al­ly sought-af­ter UN­ESCO Man and the Bios­phere Pro­gramme aims to im­prove hu­man liveli­hoods and to safe­guard nat­ur­al and man­aged ecosys­tems. It pro­motes in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach­es to eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment that are so­cial­ly and cul­tur­al­ly ap­pro­pri­ate and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sus­tain­able.

Jason Nedd: Cocoa Dancer

The NE To­ba­go UN­ESCO Man and the Bios­phere Art Trail project is fa­cil­i­tat­ed by Tom­ley Roberts and is fund­ed by the Of­fice of the Chief Sec­re­tary, the Di­vi­sion of food se­cu­ri­ty, nat­ur­al re­sources, the en­vi­ron­ment and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, the di­vi­sion of tourism, cul­ture, an­tiq­ui­ties and trans­porta­tion, the small grants pro­gramme of the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme and Wood­side En­er­gy.