Yvonne Ba­boolal

While there are promis­es in the 2011 Bud­get to make artistes glad, some of them are not sat­is­fied with the lack of a def­i­nite state­ment that the cul­tur­al sec­tor could be a main as­pect of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. Broth­er Re­sis­tance, rap­so artiste, who in­sist­ed that he was giv­ing his own opin­ion and was not speak­ing on be­half of the Artistes Coali­tion of T&T (ACTT), of which he is a mem­ber, said, "I am not sat­is­fied that the Gov­ern­ment has made a de­fin­i­tive state­ment that they are ready to fa­cil­i­tate the de­vel­op­ment of the cre­ative in­dus­try as an al­ter­na­tive path of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. "They are say­ing, on the one hand, that they are ready to di­ver­si­fy the econ­o­my and had, ear­li­er, iden­ti­fied the cre­ative in­dus­try as one pil­lar.

"I would have thought that in the Bud­get they would have made a def­i­nite state­ment on that. "But I have not seen any­thing. While there are things artistes should be glad for, I think a more def­i­nite state­ment would have been more wel­come." Broth­er Re­sis­tance said there is ev­i­dence any­where in the world to prove that the cre­ative in­dus­try is a vi­able source of eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment. He said the sec­tor can bring in­creased rev­enue and em­ploy­ment to T&T.

"There is enough peo­ple with enough eco­nom­ic com­mon sense to jus­ti­fy our coun­try go­ing in that di­rec­tion," he said.

Ear­li­er, in­ter­im pres­i­dent of the ACTT, Rubadiri Vic­tor, had sent a strong warn­ing to the Gov­ern­ment that the lo­cal cul­tur­al sec­tor is on the brink of col­lapse and that it's ei­ther "apoc­a­lypse or re­nais­sance". Vic­tor, in a Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view be­fore the Bud­get, not­ed that the cul­tur­al sec­tor has emerged as the sec­ond largest in­dus­try in the world dur­ing the glob­al re­ces­sion, said, "Em­pow­er­ing this sec­tor should be the main as­pect of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion in our econ­o­my." He said while the sec­tor has been grow­ing glob­al­ly, it has been dy­ing lo­cal­ly, through no fault of artistes. "Sev­en mas­ter mas­men have left large cos­tume mak­ing. The vi­su­al arts sec­tor is in de­cline.

"Four ma­jor gal­leries closed down in the last five years. In­ter­na­tion­al­ly, the build­ing code stip­u­lates that a cer­tain quo­ta of the cost of the struc­ture goes in­to buy­ing art but, lo­cal­ly, there is no such pro­vi­sion." Con­tin­u­ing the list, Vic­tor added, "Over the last 15 years, 25 the­atre groups have dis­man­tled. "They did not have enough back­stage space for dif­fer­ent sets. Hence the rea­son we are now see­ing the­atre with ba­si­cal­ly one set." He said in the mu­sic in­dus­try, one per­son is mak­ing $30 mil­lion a year. "But there are so many oth­er artistes who can make $30 mil­lion and more. They just need the right in­ter­na­tion­al ex­po­sure.

"Right now, the cul­tur­al sec­tor is mak­ing $1.6 bil­lion a year and if re­forms are put in place, artistes could bring in $3 bil­lion in three years." Vic­tor said all these is­sues are con­tained in a 67-page mas­ter plan, which the ACTT had sub­mit­ted to the Gov­ern­ment.

"We nev­er had a na­tion­al cul­tur­al pol­i­cy and this plan is about putting sys­tems and struc­tures in place based on in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices." He said in a meet­ing with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, they pre­sent­ed a $1.3 bil­lion fig­ure which they said was need­ed to set the cul­tur­al sec­tor back on the right foot­ing.

"We were told to come back with a re­duced fig­ure and we came back with $159 mil­lion." Out­lin­ing some of the ar­eas in which this mon­ey would be spent, Vic­tor added, "We want the cre­ation of an arts coun­cil and grant fund­ing for stake­hold­er groups. "There would be ad­e­quate fund­ing for chut­ney, pan and ca­lyp­so. "The Na­tion­al Acad­e­my of the Per­form­ing Arts would be open in Sep­tem­ber but some $80 mil­lion are need­ed for re­pairs." He plead­ed, "Some­thing needs to be done to save the sec­tor. It can no longer be busi­ness as usu­al." Vic­tor is out of the coun­try and could not be con­tact­ed for a re­sponse to the Bud­get.