Gail Alexan­der

Lo­cal artistes should host and cre­ate vir­tu­al events us­ing dig­i­tal plat­forms which can ex­port events to a glob­al au­di­ence - and can be mon­e­tised.

Tourism Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell said his min­istry is en­cour­ag­ing artistes to do so. He was re­spond­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate to Op­po­si­tion queries on mea­sures to de­vel­op pro­duc­tion of vir­tu­al per­for­mances by mu­si­cians/artistes af­ter re­duc­tion in live mu­sic per­for­mances be­cause of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Mitchell said the pan­dem­ic has re­duced artistes’ abil­i­ty to per­form in the con­ven­tion­al way.

“The min­istry en­cour­ages mu­si­cians/artistes to host vir­tu­al per­for­mances and cre­ate vir­tu­al events, which utilise dig­i­tal plat­forms. The plat­forms pro­vide artistes and cre­atives with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­port cul­tur­al as­sets to a glob­al au­di­ence and can be mon­e­tised.”

He de­tailed mea­sures to as­sist mu­si­cians/artistes in­clud­ing a 50 per cent re­duc­tion in rental cost of per­for­mance spaces at the the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts, the South­ern Acad­e­my for Per­form­ing Arts, Na­pari­ma Bowl and Queen’s Hall.

“ To date, 37 artistes and or­gan­i­sa­tions have ben­e­fit­ed from this ini­tia­tive, since im­ple­men­ta­tion in Ju­ly 2020,” he said.

He al­so cit­ed ben­e­fits from the Na­tion­al Reg­istry of Artists and Cul­tur­al Work­ers plus the Na­tion­al Days and Fes­ti­vals (NDFF) Fund and the Cul­ture and Cre­ative Arts (CCAF) Fund

“Since the ad­vent of the pan­dem­ic, sev­er­al of the re­quests re­ceived un­der both Funds have been for vir­tu­al events. The min­istry con­tin­ues to con­sid­er and sup­port re­quests, which are in­no­v­a­tive and de­vel­op­men­tal in na­ture.”

“Due to re­stric­tions on pub­lic gath­er­ings, cel­e­bra­tions were cur­tailed for nu­mer­ous cul­tur­al events. In re­sponse, the min­istry pro­vid­ed spon­sor­ship to cul­tur­al events such as Di­vali Ut­sav Vir­tu­al Con­cert, So­ca in White Vir­tu­al Con­cert and Sans Hu­man­ite Ex­tem­po Vir­tu­al Show­down. These events have reached a large au­di­ence with the Di­vali Ut­sav reach­ing 20 mil­lion views.”

Mitchell added, “Mem­bers of the pub­lic are re­mind­ed of the need to abide by all health pro­to­cols and avoid large gath­er­ings as a means of lim­it­ing COVID spread.”

Mitchell al­so said the Caribbean re­gion is look­ing to make a joint ap­proach to ac­cess Spo­ti­fy au­dio stream­ing and me­dia ser­vices ser­vices. He said while there’s no le­gal im­ped­i­ment, T&T’s mar­ket lev­el isn’t large enough for T&T alone to ac­cess Spo­ti­fy.