The first tranche of 348 cheques for the Cul­tur­al Re­lief Grant has been made ready for artistes and cre­atives.

New­ly-ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell pre­sent­ed one of the first cheques of $5000 to ca­lyp­son­ian Singing So­nia (So­nia Fran­cis) at the Lord Kitch­en­er Au­di­to­ri­um of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) on Tues­day.

In pre­sent­ing the cheque, Mitchell em­pha­sised the re­newed fo­cus by the gov­ern­ment on the sec­tor through the new Min­istry.

“COVID-19 has se­vere­ly hit our tourism and cul­tur­al in­dus­tries both lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Sev­er­al car­ni­vals, sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ties and tra­di­tion­al tourist at­trac­tions have had to tem­porar­i­ly halt op­er­a­tions. This calls for a com­plete re-think and re-en­gi­neer­ing of how we do busi­ness and de­liv­er in both close­ly aligned sec­tors as we adapt to this new nor­mal. Trinidad and To­ba­go is a coun­try whose fes­ti­vals and arts, unique­ly de­fines this cul­tur­al melt­ing pot and as such our artistes and cre­atives must be sup­port­ed as part of the ar­chi­tec­ture of brand T&T,” he said.

Launched on Ju­ly 10, 2020, the Cul­tur­al Re­lief Grant is a one-off com­pas­sion­ate Emer­gency Re­lief Grant to artistes and cre­atives, who lost in­come due to can­celled ex­hi­bi­tions, class­es, con­fer­ences, work­shops and oth­er cul­tur­al re­lat­ed events, as a re­sult of the mea­sures un­der­tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment to mit­i­gate the spread of COVID-19.

As of Au­gust 21, some 897 ap­pli­ca­tions were re­ceived by the Min­istry.

The grant is one of three ini­tia­tives ap­proved by Cab­i­net to sup­port the cul­tur­al sec­tor. The sec­ond is a 50 per cent re­duc­tion in rental cost of all state-owned per­form­ing spaces un­til De­cem­ber 31, and third­ly artistes and cre­atives can al­so ac­cess the gov­ern­ment-spon­sored SME Stim­u­lus Loan Fa­cil­i­ty.