JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Friday, July 25, 2025

That creative void

by

Guardian Media
1552 days ago
20210425

There has been an ur­gent ap­peal to Gov­ern­ment from sev­er­al cre­ative and cul­tur­al groups that should not be ig­nored.

They rep­re­sent a sec­tor that has been one of the hard­est hit by the lock­down mea­sures of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. The lat­est blow, in the form of a ban on pub­lic gath­er­ings for en­ter­tain­ment pur­pos­es and the clo­sure of per­for­mance spaces, has piled on fur­ther hard­ships.

In an un­prece­dent­ed move, the col­lec­tive voic­es of a di­verse range of artistes, rep­re­sent­ed by the Na­tion­al Dra­ma As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (NDATT), Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO), San Fer­nan­do Arts Coun­cil, T&T Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, the Tas­sa As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T, and oth­ers, have joined in a des­per­ate cry for help.

The re­stric­tions an­nounced by Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh re­sult­ed in the im­me­di­ate can­cel­la­tion or post­pone­ment of shows. These are not mere in­con­ve­niences but the sud­den loss of in­come for per­form­ers who were re­ly­ing on sup­port from spon­sors, in­vestors, and au­di­ences for their pro­duc­tions.

The 50th-an­niver­sary ac­tiv­i­ties planned by the Na­tion­al Parang As­so­ci­a­tion and A Trib­ute Con­cert to Cul­tur­al Dance Icon—Tor­rance Mo­hammed are among the events halt­ed by the lock­down.

While it can be ar­gued that the coro­n­avirus has sent the en­tire world in­to a tail­spin, the re­al­i­ty is that the cur­rent cri­sis de­mands some out-of-the-box think­ing by T&T’s de­ci­sion-mak­ers to pro­tect and pre­serve the sec­tors that will need to be func­tion­ing con­trib­u­tors to the coun­try’s growth and de­vel­op­ment post-COVID.

They should be see­ing the val­ue of the cre­ative in­dus­tries as dri­vers of the in­no­va­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty that will fi­nal­ly bring T&T to that still elu­sive eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion and ex­port growth on which our long-term pros­per­i­ty de­pends.

The artistes now cry­ing out for help be­long to an in­dus­try that had emerged in the pre-pan­dem­ic days as a key growth sec­tor in the re­gion, con­tribut­ing to GDP, ex­ports, and em­ploy­ment. T&T, like many oth­er coun­tries in the Caribbean, has over many decades giv­en to the world recog­nis­able artistes and events, in­clud­ing our very own Car­ni­val.

Be­fore COVID-19, glob­al mar­ket de­mand for cul­tur­al con­tent had been steadi­ly in­creas­ing and the cul­tur­al and cre­ative in­dus­tries sec­tor had been one of the fastest-grow­ing sec­tors of the world econ­o­my. This coun­try’s de­ci­sion-mak­ers can­not lose sight of that fact.

Not too long ago, when plung­ing en­er­gy prices put di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion high on the na­tion­al agen­da, the Cre­ative In­dus­tries Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (Cre­ativeTT) was put for­ward as the state en­ter­prise that would “stim­u­late and fa­cil­i­tate the busi­ness de­vel­op­ment and ex­port ac­tiv­i­ties of the cre­ative in­dus­tries in T&T to gen­er­ate na­tion­al wealth.”

Cre­ativeTT was seen as part of a vi­sion to po­si­tion T&T’s cre­ative in­dus­tries as key com­po­nents of our long-term eco­nom­ic sus­tain­abil­i­ty.

But now it seems, in the face of COVID-19's de­bil­i­tat­ing ef­fect on the in­dus­try, that the agency is dor­mant.

Ear­li­er on in the pan­dem­ic, Cre­ativeTT had enun­ci­at­ed a plan “to at­tract new in­vest­ment in the cre­ative sec­tor, util­is­ing the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy and a move to more ef­fi­cient ways of con­duc­tion train­ing ses­sions, and pro­grammes by mov­ing to on­line plat­forms for we­bi­na­rs, train­ing ses­sions.”

With so many in the in­dus­try on the brink of fail­ure, it is time to shift that plan in­to high gear.

Editorial


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored