Are we all criminals?

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Got this from zotz, aka Drew Roberts, who is a passionate proponent of creative commons licensing, of a rethinking of the copyright laws of the twentieth century:http://blip.tv/scripts/flash/showplayer.swf?enablejs=true&file=http%3A//blip.tv/rss/flash/730724&autostart=false

 I wanted to post it, and link to the page it came from, because I agree with it, 95%.  My reservation comes when I'm thinking about our local creative work.  Creative commons is all very well when it's applied to corporations versus individuals -- the very issues that are being discussed above.  But what happens when corporations lay claim to the intellectual property of countries, cultures, groups?  What recourse do the creators have then?  I am still a supporter of copyright law when it applies to those peoples and cultures who did not get to benefit from the turning of knowledge into capital that occurred in the twentieth century; I believe that without the fundamental comprehension that what we imagine and make is worth cash we in the Americas will continue to do what we were established to do by Europe and its successors in North America -- provide the raw material for others to refine, market, sell, and profit from.But check out the video.  It's still something worth discussing.  Good food for thought.

Presentation Zen: Is education killing creativity?

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Came across this:

our education systems (around the world) are outdated and mainly designed to meet the needs of industrialization. Sir Ken [Robinson] makes many good points — some you may not agree with — but he certainly is not saying that math and science should be taught or studied less, rather that music and the arts and creativity in general should be pursued more.Presentation Zen: Is education killing creativity?

I think I tend to agree.Forget being tentative. I totally agree.Here's what Sir Ken says in his own words:

Every education system on earth has the same hierarchy of subjects ... At the top are mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts. Everywhere on earth. And in pretty much every system too, there's a hierarchy within the arts. Art and music are normally given a higher status in school than drama and dance. There isn't an education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach them mathematics.

See for yourself - the YouTube clip via Riz Khan:[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAt-3Yk2u80&hl=en&fs=1]And the whole thing itself thanks to TED:http://static.videoegg.com/ted/flash/loader.swfArt and culture make good business.

CARIFESTA X - An Alternative to the same old, same old

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wonder of the world: CARIFESTA X - An Alternative to the same old, same oldThe Bookman, a blog from Trinidad and Tobago, muses on art, CARIFESTA, and society.  It's not coincidental, I think, that this week I've been to two talks already about the same thing:  one on Wednesday at PopOp Studios about CARIFESTA XI to be held in The Bahamas, and one last night at Chapter One Bookstore about the role of the writer in society.  At the end of the panel discussion from last night, where six of us, writers from very different backgrounds and with very different bodies of work, spoke about that role, we were answered in the discussion that followed by a visual artist who told us that our conversations were not isolated, that they were happening all around the country.   Something is happening nationwide about the Caribbean arts.  Perhaps we are coming into ourselves.  The Bookman suggests that perhaps this something is happening regionally.  Because I believe in the latter, I'm going to quote from The Bookman's comment on CARIFESTA X to illustrate, just a little, what I mean, and what I hope:

One cannot help but feel that art is held as a fringe. That artists are at the edges of society, almost invisible, except for moments when society is engaged with it and comments on talent. It is always the same trite comment at that, that there is so much talent in Trinidad and Tobago…and? What are we doing about it?
...
So I am going around in circles with my point. The public need to be educated about what is happening in the arts locally and regionally. The corporate world needs to get more involved in the arts and make it much more relevant to their own business mandates, and the artists themselves must start to hold themselves to the highest standards, look at their profession as deserving of much more than handouts and government support and we need to be very loud and clear about just how much we mean to our society by having alternative spaces to show our work and encourage the society to see that we mean business and that it isn’t business as usual.

A Little Respect

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Received the following by email.  It's from Terneille Burrows (TaDa).  Quite frankly, I was thrilled to get it. Those of us who work in the Department of Culture have made similar points in boardrooms and accountants' offices, but the attitudes about ourselves and our artists persist.I'm not going to say more -- I'm just going to post her letter and let her speak for herself.

 

Big Acts, Big Budgets... bad for Bahamian Artists??

By Terneille Burrows*A major concert sponsored by Bahamian companies and featuring multi-platinum hip-hop artist Lil Wayne will take place in Nassau on Friday September 26, 2008. Will Bahamian performers on this show be fairly treated and compensated???However outrageous it may seem, Bahamian recording artists are often times given the "short end of the stick" when it comes to being recruited to perform on shows featuring major international recording acts. Despite the promoters best efforts to make local artists feel important (backstage, pre and post party events access etc.), there may not be payment offered for the artists' services, which can include not only performing at the show, but making promotional appearances, attending rehearsals, meetings, sound-check and lending their name and likeness to be attached with the event promotion. (Oops, the natives were neglected from the big budget…oh well…)However, it seems everyone except the local artists financially benefit (promoters, advertising media, venues, event consultants, security firms, sound and lighting companies etc.) When promoters apply for international artists' visas and other required licenses to work in our country, should we also demand that our local artists be compensated for their contributions as well? While some might argue that local performers should jump at the chance to be on a big event, merely for the presumed prestige of it, I would have to disagree. Bahamian artists have long fought for the respect of our craft, as some of us do this for a living, while others aspire to. I feel as though if an artist or entertainer has worked to establish them self and gained a decent local following, there should be a fee attached with their service.Some sectors of the Bahamian entertainment industry have established systems in place to cultivate their respective discipline. The burgeoning Bahamian film industry has benefitted vastly from practices implemented by the Ministry of Tourism's Bahamas Film and Television Commission division. The Bahamas film commission has become a excellent example of a system that should be emulated by the wider entertainment and performance industries in the Bahamas.  Film commissioner Craig Woods, and his team actively promote and facilitate the hiring of Bahamian crew for productions that come to be filmed here. They are in intent on continuing the nourishment of the Bahamian film industry through not only promoting Bahamians gaining experience on film productions, but also by providing them with employment on productions that come to town.We as artists and artists' representatives are also to blame for allowing ourselves to be so freely taken advantage of. It's time to effect dramatic change and encourage Bahamians and foreigners alike to regard Bahamian artists and entertainers as working professionals. Throughout other parts of the world, local independent artists are taken seriously for their work.  More closely to home, in parts of the Caribbean, particularly Jamaica, Trinidad and Barbados, there exists established and organized music industries.  The government, corporate world and consumers alike support their local music scenes. Major artists like Rihanna, Sean Paul, and Sean Kingston come from the Caribbean, are all respected on the international scene, and celebrated by their countrymen. Why can't we do the same in our country?Other Artists' Input"This (exploitation) has been going on for far too long and people are afraid to speak out for fear of being blacklisted, but mainly because we have been conditioned to believe that we as Bahamians are not 'good enough' to make it on an international level".– Margaret 'Believe' Glynatsis (Recording Artist/Producer) "It is insulting when an organizer expects an entertainer to perform for free however charitable the event without saying, we are willing to pay 'x' in exchange for your services - which in turn offers the artist the opportunity to say,  'don't worry about it, I'll do it for free'. If a promoter/organizer is unable to pay you, there should be some exchange, pre-agreed by both of you that is valued at the cost of your performance i.e. - goods or services, event passes, commercial consideration... something.  And I won't begin to talk about Flyers, Press Releases, web-advertising, radio mentions.– Bodine 'Be' Johnson (Recording Artist/Journalist)"How can major international promoters and the local consultants they hire expect to be taken seriously by local (Bahamian) acts, when our performers are treated like second class citizens at events in our own country? I have seen too many major concerts come to the Bahamas and have local artists act as guinea pigs, while sound engineers check levels and tweak the house system during the opening performances in preparation for the headliners!! The local artist are again put in a predicament, when headliners arrive late, and the opening acts are used to "stall" the aggravated audience. For this type of treatment, it only adds injury to insult to imagine our Bahamian artists performing at these events without being duly compensated"– Ian 'Bigg E' Cleare (Producer/Studio) 

 Talk it, family!

Another View of CARIFESTA

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Alissa Trotz makes some salient points (hey, Alissa!!)In the Diaspora : Stabroek News

In a presentation made at the Caricom Heads of Govern-ment Conference in July, Barbadian novelist George Lamming took Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo to task for the following comment “…and now we come to the lighter side, CARIFESTA in Guyana.”There is one way to interpret these remarks, as seeing culture as entertainment to engage in when the real work is finished. It is a view that allows ‘culture’ to fall by the wayside, to be addressed only after the ‘real’ priorities of so-called development are attended to, like building roads and paying off the foreign debt. As Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott observed in his exchange with the President at the opening CARIFESTA symposium, we have heard politicians rehearse these tired arguments for years. Walcott expressed his ambivalence about a festival that asks us to celebrate the wanton disregard for our artists in a region where with few exceptions artistic endeavour is not seen as a serious vocation. Here is the ongoing lie of CARIFESTA, illustrated by the profound gap between rhetorical pronouncements and the woeful state of our institutional infrastructure supporting the arts.

Read more.

An answer, maybe, to Rick

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Guyana Providence Stadium: Guyana - Rambler on the benefits of Carifesta

So please, El Presidente could you arrange just one more week of freeness, dancing and drinking? You know as a Moscow trained economist that this splurge of government spending, (you take $500 million of taxpayer’s money out of the economy and send it right back in) is not the zero sum game it would appear on paper. It multiplies throughout the truly long lasting, productive sectors: beer, rum, hair salons, boutiques and Red Dragon.And what a shining example of public/private partnership, the mega concerts were. For example, you invited the company that imported soda pop/beer to hold a concert for which people had to buy the same soda pop/beer to receive a ticket. This demonstrates how even-handed you can be even as your investigation into the customs scam grinds to a halt.The performers stay in the hotel you helped finance with our money and thereby reduce the hotel’s interest-free loan in a way that is impossible to verify.Then you get the newspaper whose owners your government gave illegal tax concessions to, to join an unquestioning cheerleading chorus for Carifesta along with your personal TV and radio stations.Let’s not even mention the Chronic, which ignored everything else in Guyana for ten days as it entered the magical world of Carifestaland. Not even the killing of those criminals – what are their names again? - could crash their party.No wonder it was a success. You proclaimed it was a success, the biggest ever… like your budgets, your tax revenues, and you were everywhere, omnipresent: you quarrelled with Walcott, avoided auditors at the Grand Market, addressed the gospel fest, declaring the country was in safe hands …you meant your hands of course, not God’s. Ha ha silly us!And the crowds! The multitudes came out for you, for your country. After all 30,000 people at the Banks Ultra Mega Concert-to-end-all-Concerts can’t be wrong! And in the process, they made the PNC look like fuddy-duddy party poopers.

The point, though, is that it didn't have to be government-funded only.  My point was that the demand for such events is high, and is worth money.  Governments don't have to make everything free to make something economically viable; in fact, governments often destroy the economic viability of cultural events by too much interference.  Take Junkanoo as an example.We would do well to pay attention.

CARIFESTA Update: Thursday

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So the container was definitely in Freeport, and we were faced with the issue of getting its contents here somehow. The call was made in Nassau, between the Minister and my Under Secretary. DHL was contacted and they agreed to fly the contents to Guyana by cargo plane. No explanation was given for the delay of the container, beyond the report that the cargo boat on which it was to go was full, and so the container didn't make it on (we also heard, though, that the boat was not expected to arrive in Guyana until August 28th, so that was in itself a problem). No apology was given either, and no refund yet.That was by the way. The contingent was scheduled to board the charter jet and fly out to Guyana at 3:15 and the Minister and party were to be on that. At the Guyana end we put the last things in place -- buying basic foodstuffs for the houses and arranging food at the apartments, and setting up room numbers and pre-checking in the guests at the hotel.There was a press conference in the morning to which I was invited -- there seems to be high demand for Bahamian participation in things, perhaps because we were the failed hosts, perhaps because we are the next hosts, who knows? and so I sat behind the table with the Minister and other officials. All went smoothly, the press conference took place, and then back I went to the hotel.And in the evening, a group of is -- myself, Ronald, Vola, and Luther, our liaison officer -- went out to the airport to meet the plane and get the contingent moving.We ran into a few small hitches. Though the transportation for the people was arranged without too much problem, it was overorganized on paper, and didn't take into account the reality of a press of 140 passengers plus luggage. There were too many people with too much to say, each of them responsible for a different aspect of things, and the result of course was confusion. But by 8:30 the first set of people -- the passengers for the hotel -- were on their bus and ready to go, and their luggage had been loaded on a truck for transport. And then we saw the problem. There was only one truck! We had asked for two, and we needed two, but there was only one, and the luggage was still piled up on the kerb. So as we debated and argued and tried to convince the people who'd worked out their plans on paper that the luggage left behind could NOT fit onto the buses they were sending, and that we needed a second truck, the passengers loaded on to the first two buses waited. And waited. The night was close and hot, and they waited on close, hot buses.Finally, after the paper plans didn't work as they had been designed, flexibility and pragmatism took over. The passengers drove off, all except for a few who were left to deal with the remaining luggage, waiting for the truck. And we waited. And waited. And waited. And made phone calls. And reminded the various people at the airport who had responsibilities but no real authority that we had requested two trucks, not one. And waited. And watched the rain fall, and waited.And finally we got the second truck, around 10:00, got it loaded, loaded ourselves onto the bus, and drove off towards the apartments.On the way there I got a phonecall. Just a headsup, said Philip. The Junkanoo fellas have gone to the apartments and they don't like them. They are refusing to stay there.Crisis.I won't go into details here or now, or maybe ever. All I'll say is that they didn't like the apartments, which were too small and too downscale for them, and they made their case to the Minister, and they eventually moved themselves into the hotel, which is where they are now and where they'll remain.I am a servant, not always civil, so I live to serve.

Sunday Report from CARIFESTA

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Well, I know it's been some time since the last update. The ideal would be to have daily updates, but it's not always possible. Even today I'm writing from the Queen's College auditorium, where The Children's Teeth is scheduled to take place, which is, frankly, a school auditorium, Caribbean style, with some very nice elements to it, but also with the kinds of things we Bahamians did away with twenty-odd years ago when we were building auditoria. Not to say that we were right to do so - but just that we did. Money changes many things, not all of them for the better.Queen's College Auditorium from outsideAnd anyway, what I meant to say about this post, being written from Queen's College, is that I'm not online here, and I'll have to wait to get back to one of the residences to upload it. So it may not appear till this evening.Or earlier, if the show is rained out.So let's get some history here. I'll split this into posts that can update on their own, so that there'll be some activity on this site. I'll start with Thursday (Thursday was a very low day indeed), then I'll move on to Friday and yesterday, and then there'll be today. Which is an underwater day.Check later.

CARIFESTA and Tourism Potential

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There's a tendency for Bahamians and other "sensible people" to express scepticism regarding the value of the arts.  Word has it that there's a fairly widespread consensus that the hosting and/or attendance at CARIFESTA is a waste of money and time.

However, there's no similar consensus that direct expenditure on the hiring of international (read Madison Avenue) advertising firms is a similar waste.  And yet such expenditure has not borne dividends in the refocussing or development of our tourism industry.

Look at what the arts, on the other hand, is doing for Guyana, traditionally not a tourist destination:

Canadian based Guyanese and other theatre enthusiasts from the Caribbean Diaspora and Canada are receiving a sample of CARIFESTA and at the same time contributing to the Canadian contingent's participation in CARIFESTA X with the premiere of "Sweet, Sweet Karaila."

Entertainment News - IslandEvents.com - CARIFESTA X Play "Sweet" In Canada - Jul 31, 2008

It's an entirely different demographic from the one we generally target.  Is our expenditure on CARIFESTA ($0.5 million to attend this year, and $15-$20 million over three years to host) really any more wasteful than the $12 million we found to engage the new advertising firm this past January?

Hosting Carifesta X : Stabroek News

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...we have every right – and every reason – to continue to believe that an event like Carifesta can help to fashion the economic integration that we have talked about for so many decades and which, it appears, is even now, being contemplated with renewed interest by sheer force of circumstances.

...One of the things that Carifesta X can and should do is to remind the entire region of our collective economic potential. Those who come here from across the Caribbean will, we hope, get an opportunity to come to a more refined understanding of Guyana’s economic potential, in areas like agriculture, agro-processing, mining, and jewellery production – and hopefully, those experiences will not only create a greater appreciation of the value of intra-regional    trade but will also generate ideas that will lead to an acceleration of intra-regional investment including investment in the growth and preservation of the region’s culture.

Hosting Carifesta X : Stabroek News

The whole article's worth a read.

CARIFESTA X

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In one week's time, the Opening Ceremony of CARIFESTA X will be over.  We'll be in Guyana, the place CARIFESTA originated, celebrating the festival's return to its birthplace.  Guyana stepped in when we in The Bahamas relinquished our commitment to host, and, despite having had only one year to plan the festival in, took the plunge anyway.There's a lot of discussion in cyberspace about whether or not it'll be a success.  There's debate, particularly in the Guyanese global community, about whether it's even a good idea to "invite people to Guyana", given all the social and economic difficulties in the country.  There's criticism of the CARIFESTA Secretariat in Guyana, there's criticism of the organizers, and it's true that on some levels and in some ways the way in which CARIFESTA has always been conducted continues -- in particular the way in which the festival is promoted globally.  On the other hand, though, there's a current of excitement out there that indicates that there's a change in the way this festival is held and perceived.  The very fact that there's independent discussion about CARIFESTA, whether the discussion is critical or supportive, indicates that it's no longer the best-kept secret in the Caribbean -- last time, when I began to blog from Trinidad and Tobago, people I knew in the artistic cyber-world had never heard of the festival, which has been in existence since 1972.  This time, Guyanese from the diaspora all over the world are at least contemplating attending the festival!  This in itself is a step in the right direction.  And this time, too, the Bahamian delegation is going to CARIFESTA accompanied by observers, well-wishers and people who are paying their own way to get a chance to see what's happening on the ground, or just to have a slightly different kind of vacation.  We're going to be accompanied by officials from the Ministry of Tourism so they can get an idea of what the whole thing is about, and also by some other advisors who can get a sense of what it is we've committed to hosting in 2010.I have no idea what the Festival's going to be like, but the buzz is growing.  We'll need to ride it if we want CARIFESTA XI Bahamas 2010 to be a success.  I'll blog from there and keep people posted.

Signifyin' Guyana speaks out on CARIFESTA

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Signifyin' Guyana: Finally!

Bahamian blogger, Lynn Sweeting (womanish words) says she'll be participating in the upcoming festival of arts (Carifesta) in Guyana. Finally, somebody else (besides Ruel) who can lay claims to artistic talent has voiced a public commitment to doing something (ARTS RELATED!) for Carifesta. Okay, two down many to go.

Yes, so it's an old post. And if you go to Signifyin' Guyana's main page, you'll find a countdown to CARIFESTA. But all I wanted to say here was:It's really happening. This country (The Bahamas) is putting together a contingent of 135 performers and observers to go to Guyana. The contingent's so big because we are supposed to be the hosts of the next CARIFESTA (I know, we've been there before) and we need to know what we're getting into.I'll keep people updated. Guyanese blogs are keeping track. The countdown is on -- 12 days to CARIFESTA now! And our advance party (with me in it) leaves a week from today.There it is.Here are links to CARIFESTA news stories, courtesy of the CARIFESTA page.

Budget

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The Bahamas' budget debate is taking place now.  As a civil servant, I am not free to comment as I would like.  So I'll just ask questions instead.I am listening to the debate, and the rhetoric is impressive.  But what is the reality?  Is this budget really preparing us for the 21st century?  Do we even understand what the 21st century will require of us?Here's the link to our budget.You can download bits and pieces or the whole thing in .pdf format.  I encourage you to do so.Here are some links to important global developments that will impact our economy in short order.World Trade Organization (WTO)UNESCO Cultural Industries Overview

CARICOM Cultural Industries (pdf)

CARIFESTA XI

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For people who haven't been paying attention, it turns out that The Bahamas is going to host CARIFESTA after all, earlier than originally announced.

Trinidad and Tobago has agreed to let The Bahamas host the Caribbean Festival of Creative Arts (CARIFESTA) in 2010, Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham announced Saturday.

He made the disclosure during a press conference at the conclusion of the Caricom conference, held in Nassau last week. The Bahamas was supposed to host the festival in 2012, but Trinidad and The Bahamas have swapped places. This will be the first time the country has hosted the festival.

Source: The Nassau Guardian Online

It's that time of the year

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when I disappear from view. The reason? The E. Clement Bethel National Arts Festival. For those who don't know, the spring period in the Department of Culture (as they call my division) is the other great programme that we do. Unlike Junkanoo, however, the vast majority of Bahamians seem not to have heard about it. I don't know why not, really. It's true we don't advertise the Festival, but then we don't advertise Junkanoo either, so it may not be that. It could be because the government has traditionally spent one-tenth or less of the money it spends on Junkanoo on the Festival -- again, I don't know why. (This year, thankfully, is different; we have authorization to spend one and a half to three times as much on Festival than we have ever had in the past). But there it is. My department produces the Festival, we cover the archipelago in doing so, and we do it in relative secrecy.If I weren't bound by General Orders, I'd speculate on what the problem traditionally has been. I'd ruminate about the way in which our independent Bahamian governments -- forget the party, forget the leaders, because there has never been any difference, ever -- have spent money on our people. I'd suggest that we've always been more interested in events and things than we are in human capital. It's true that our education system gets the lion's share of the national budget, but it's equally true that we are not getting our money's worth; it hasn't yet bought excellent educations for our children, and yet we're playing the same old game. And none of it allows the children themselves to choose -- really choose -- what they wish to be in life, because the tools that they're being given aren't equipping them for the world they find themselves living in.I say that because the world they're living in is a world that should, by all lights, provide opportunities for thousands to make money from private enterprise of various kinds. It could be the perfect world for self-employment, if our society were set up that way. The fact that millions (I'm not going to quibble with the number; anything over a million is enough for me) of people visit The Bahamas annually should be able to provide our mere thousands of Bahamians with tourist money of all sorts. We should be performing, creating, manufacturing, and branding our creations in such a way that we are all benefitting; but that is not how our society or our economy works. There are too many gatekeepers between the visitor and the creative Bahamian. There are too many contracts that allow resorts to occupy our land without respecting our culture, to permit them to furnish their buildings and entertain their guests without reference to who we are and what we have to offer. There are too many walls and too many gates, and too many reasons for people who grow up on islands other than New Providence to leave their homes and look for work.Here's what I know from almost five years of observing culture in The Bahamas and suffering from being in cultural administration.We Bahamians are almost impossibly creative. It's true of all of the Caribbean, but it's peculiarly true of The Bahamas. Though things are changing, the comment of almost every foreigner who is exposed to the talents of the Bahamian people is that every Bahamian is a creative artist.But

  • We Bahamians have no nationally sanctioned outlet for our creativity beyond Junkanoo.
  • We Bahamians have no nationally sanctioned or supported avenue to develop our talents, with the exception of the (absurdly underfunded and underrecognized) National Arts Festival. And so we almost universally hide them -- or worse, ruin them through misapplication.
  • We Bahamians have no avenue to market our talents.
  • We Bahamians have no respect for our talents.
  • We Bahamians have no space to exercise our talents.
  • We Bahamians are making too little money from our talents.

And we wonder -- or let foreign editors wonder for us -- why our society is too violent, too cruel, and too crime-ridden.The answer's right before us. There are none so blind as those who do not see.

On Raisins and the Sun

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I'm sitting in Starbucks, listening to a jazz rendition of "Sponger Money". I must admit it sounds good. And it feels good to hear an international take on a Bahamian song. But I'm also wondering a couple of things.The first one is what the thing is called. Is it called "Sponger Money" on the label, or does it have a different title -- Spanish, maybe, or something unrelated in English?The second one is who the song is said to be by. Now I don't know the answer to that one, as I have not done the research necessary to find out who wrote it. I can hazard a guess -- perhaps it was Charles Lofthouse, who wrote several songs in the first part of the twentieth century. More likely, it was an anonymous person, maybe a man on a sponge boat, or a woman clipping sponges on the wharf. I do know of at least one person who arranged the song: my father, E. Clement Bethel.The third one (correct, this is a Bahamian "couple"), intimately connected to the first two, is who's getting the royalties for the song.Now I know (as well as one can know these things) that the song is Bahamian. It makes sense, after all; sponging was a major Bahamian industry for the better part of a century, from the mid 1800s to the late 1930s, and the song tells the story of the industry. The version I know was the one we used to sing when I was growing up:Sponger money never done, we got sponger moneySponger money is a lotta fun, we got sponger moneyLaugh gal laughLaugh gal laughLaugh gal laughWe got sponger moneyBut the question I have to ask is this. Even though the song is Bahamian, what Bahamian is getting the revenue from the song?It's a serious question, and one that I have to ask, given the kind of debate that followed the postponement of The Bahamas' hosting of CARIFESTA from 2008 to 2012. That debate, and the general dismissal of culture in general (and, by extension, of our culture in particular) made me realize that most of us -- from the man and woman in the street to the politicians in the highest offices -- are missing the point when it comes to cultural discussions. It made me realize, once again, that our society is locked into a mentality that is jammed firmly into the third quarter of the twentieth century, and that will hinder us not only from developing in the 21st century global economy, but also from maintaining our current economic position as the economic leader in the Caribbean.It's a mentality that is regressive on a number of fronts. In the first place, it continues to imagine -- despite ample evidence to the contrary -- that culture is dispensable, something that you do in your spare time if you can afford it, but not something that has any right to exist on its own. This is the mentality that has led to the removal of music, dance and art programmes from primary schools, permitted adults to regard creative activities as optional, not central, elements in children's development, allowed teachers to divorce the use of language from thought itself, and criminalized self-expression. It's also the mentality that suggests that the enjoyment of life is a waste of time, and that having a unique perspective on the world is sin.It's a mentality, in short, that creates a fertile breeding ground for negative activity. By stifling the ability of people to respond creatively to their environment -- whether that environment is pleasant or difficult -- it leaves them with only the option of a negative response. When you have no room to contemplate or create, you will fight.And so our attitude towards culture is hurting us in several ways. On the one hand, it's rendering us less competitive on the economic front. While we continue to invest in things that became obsolete twenty years ago -- in sun, sand and sea, in gambling, in resort-based tourism, in cruise ship arrivals -- our neighbours are diversifying their tourist economies and creating experiences for their visitors and their citizens alike that will bring the same people back again and again.On the other hand, our dismissal of things cultural is hurting us socially. Not only does it mean that the vacuum that is "Bahamian" society of the 2000s has left us vulnerable to invasions from north and south alike; but it also encourages the development of a criminal sub-culture. Young people who have no sense of self, no outlet for their frustration, and no way of affirming their existence in a country that ignores them will inevitably resort to violence and anti-social behaviour.And this should be no surprise to us. After all, Langston Hughes, the great African-American poet, put it in fairly simple terms. What happens to the dream deferred? he asked.Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?Or fester like a sore--And then run?Does it stink like rotten meat?Or crust and sugar over--like a syrupy sweet?Maybe it just sags --like a heavy load.Or does it explode?

On CARIFESTA 2008

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This post can only serve as an announcement of some basic, bald information that has already been shared elsewhere.The Bahamas Government has taken the executive decision that The Bahamas will not be hosting the Caribbean Festival of Arts in 2008, believing that The Bahamas will be unprepared to host the Festival.Instead, The Bahamas has bid to host the Caribbean Festival of Arts in 2012.Related links:Bahama JournalNassau GuardianCaribbean Broadcasting CorporationAt this moment, I remain a civil servant. Please feel free to add your comments here if you like. I will be unable to respond to them. However, given my earlier posts on the topic, I believe that it is important that I acknowledge the decision of the Government on my blog.A broader discussion is occurring here.

Forget the Song and Dance, Culture is Big Business

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In my travels as Director of Culture, I've had the opportunity to meet and talk with some dynamic Caribbean professionals who are passionate about the development of their countries and of this regions through the cultural industries. One of them is Josanne Leonard, a Trinidadian media consultant who is crusading for adjustment in policy and for the laying of a foundation on which to build those industries. She sent me the following article, which I'm reprinting in full below.

reprinted with permission

CUT THE SONG AND DANCE, CULTURE IS BIG BUSINESS

July 2007By Josanne LeonardThis is the age of the Creative Economy. And as if to parallel the era of the plantation economy that fuelled the empire, it's a time when our creative industries are increasingly a key factor in driving cultural and economic development in the more industrialised countries while gasping for air in the nurseries and creative enclaves of own Caribbean backyards.For the uninitiated, uninformed or unbelievers, creative industries in the Caribbean as elsewhere encompass activities which have their origin in individual creativity, skill and talent and which have the real potential for wealth and job creation through the generation and exploitation of intellectual property. By way of definition, such industries would include:• Live and recorded music• Television, radio and internet broadcasting• Film, video and other audiovisual production• Performing arts and entertainment• Writing and publishing• Fashion clothing/design• Visual arts and antiques• Graphic design/software development/animation• Crafts and designer furniture• Advertising• Architecture• Educational and leisure softwareOne glimpse at this list would make the point that many of these are areas of creative enterprise in which the Caribbean has always excelled, notably in music, writing, and the performing arts. Yet we remain 'impoverished' with the perception that our development is so beyond our reach and not possible without the begging bowl. The reasons for this phenomenon are many but come to one crucial point….a lack of belief in ourselves, at least on the part of those who are charged with speaking on our behalf.Even as the intellectual property of the region takes flight to add value to external economies, the Caribbean is itself fast becoming a net importer of our own cultural content packaged and sold back to us from firms in the north. Such is our desperate need to be rubber-stamped and validated from the outside, even when it involves content and creativity born in the belly of the Caribbean.Inexplicably, alongside this occurs another piece of madness in which we spend huge sums on tourism budgets to promote festivals and films that rely on foreign artists, broadcast media and film companies. We pay for these with our scarce foreign exchange earnings (US dollars), own no media rights to exploit once the events are done and find ourselves blocked from merchandising any of the said images in any form. Conversely within the CSME, our artists and creative enterprises in the region have to contend with filling out forms to travel with their instruments/tools of their trade and, in some instances, are taxed. They pay duties and tariffs on paper, ink, digital technology, computer parts, instruments and the list goes on. Try sending a promotional CD or DVD to a radio or TV station or mount a traveling art or video festival within the CSME and one begins to understand that the cultural workers and the enterprises that support them have no real value in the economic life of the region. A sad consequence of inadequate or absent robust public policy needed to enable the development and investment in our creative sectors.But it's not just the governments who are missing the big picture. The Economic Intelligence gathering and market analysis of firms like PriceWaterhouseCoopers and Ernst and Young are producing the detailed global outlook reports that demonstrate clearly that many of today's most successful companies are broadcasters, publishers, entertainers and games designers, and they are growing fast. Because cultural/creative products are information-based, the rapid advance of digital technologies and the globalisation of communications networks and creative industries have put the cultural sectors among the fastest-growing in the world. Yet, with few exceptions, the traditional Caribbean private sector is yet to awaken to the possibilities of divestment and investment in the creative industries while our banks remain closed to the vast majority of creative entrepreneurs, most of whom are micro and small enterprises. In the more advanced economies of the world, these sectors are showing annual growth rates between 5% and 20%. The 'old' industrial giants of the 50’s and 60’s such as General Electric, Phillips, Sony and even a French water company now own some of the brand new names in the list of top transglobal firms: Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Universal and News Corporation. Today, culture is big business.Connecting the dots from our cultural sectors to industrial development can no longer be discussed in terms of platitudinous, condescending ideas about promoting or sponsoring the arts and culture; it must be put on the table in terms of policies and entrepreneurial strategies that focus on the quantifiable benefits of creative endeavours throughout the economy. We are compelled by external forces to move away from dependence on our traditional exports and in the case of T&T, to diversify the oil and gas-driven economy. This requires a revolutionary human capital approach to investing in the creativity in our society, rather than an exceptional industry approach with well-meaning but piece-meal 'handouts' for entertainment and cultural entrepreneurs. Its also means serious capitalisation manned (and woman-ned) by real industry professionals (not cultural supporters) for para-statal firms like the Cultural Industries Council in Jamaica and the Entertainment Company of T&T, as examples. The former will lead logically to sustained investment in education and training at all levels, industry development and fiscal investment while the other will perpetuate the 'plug-a-hole' approach. In this regard, Caribbean governments need to be thinking about what they must do to foster innovation and creative talent while developing enabling policies designed to keep our creative industries attuned to domestic and global realities.In June, here in T&T, as regional trade officials met to discuss the European Partnership Agreement (EPAs), two things were confirmed. Firstly, the EU market is virtually 'closed' to us in terms of market access for our audio-visual products and services, something industry experts have been trying to get culture and trade officials to understand ad nauseum. Secondly, there is no co-coordinated response and articulation of policy at the level of CARICOM states on Culture and Trade. This coming fresh on the heels of a Regional Cultural Committee Meeting also held in June 2007 in Havana, Cuba and three years after this issue was tabled by this writer at an RCC forum in T&T; two major regional gatherings of creative entrepreneurs, artists and professionals in 2004 and 2006 under the auspices of the Caribbean Regional Negotiating Machinery (CRNM) and numerous on-going consultations with Cultural Industries private sector professionals who have provided industry insights, market information and policy direction to many of the region's governments and bodies like Caribbean Export, UNESCO, ILO, CARICOM as well as to leading economic experts - only to be confronted with requests for more studies and talk shops.As a consequence we had no CARIFORUM positions to press for around the table in discussions with the EU negotiators even while some individual member states have been 'championing' the case for the creative industries in their domestic space. Jamaica has a new Ministry of Tourism, Entertainment and Culture, a reconstituted Cultural Industries Council (formerly the Entertainment Advisory Board), the Film, Music and Media Commission under Jamaica Trade and Invest (formerly JAMPRO); Barbados is about to table a Creative Industries Development Investment Act; Antigua and Barbuda has signalled its intent to produce a Cultural Policy; the OECS Secretariat has identified the Creative Industries as a plank of its economic development agenda and in this regard has had discussions with UNCTAD (which incidentally has no budget for work in this area) while ignoring the work being done in the region; T&T has the Film Company because film has been identified as a significant cultural sector in T&T though the data may tell us otherwise as well as the Entertainment Company of T&T which is yet to officially open its doors and we may yet see the newest incarnation of a Cultural Policy document.The point here is that with all of this activity, we have no public policy framework, fiscal incentives and indicators of enterprise development that make sense of all this hard work. This lack of dialogue filters down to the domestic level whereby various arms of government are not aware of the work of industry and thus a constant re-inventing of the wheel through the convening of various committees, task forces and the call for more studies and reports. Attempts to revive a creative industries private sector presence in one forum of CARICOM, the regional ICT steering committee, is yet to receive a response and at the highest organs of policy making, the COTED and COHSOD and inevitably the Forum of Finance Ministers, creative industries remain a talk shop item.While this may sound critical, it is meant to drive home the point about the need for meaningful dialogue. Finally, there's the need for cultural practitioners and entrepreneurs to do the 'hard wuk' required rather than wait on donor or government handouts. We are moving into a different world now- one where the raw materials are not oil, steel or gas even but information, where the most valuable products are ideas and knowledge, powered not by machines but by the imagination. The time has come for the islands of the Caribbean to seize the opportunities offered by the creative economy as a strategy for socio-economic inclusion and development, nurtured and fuelled by the renewable sources of our national creativity.In coming articles, we will examine some key aspects of the value chain of the creative economy – music, media, and telecommunications- as well issues of marketing and maximising our domestic and global competitiveness.Josanne Leonard is a media, communications and entertainment professional. This article appears in the July edition of the T&T Review, official publication of the Lloyd Best Institute of the West Indies. See my profile at www.myspace.com/josanneleonard. Email your comments to miribai@tstt.net.tt.

Tourism - a different perspective

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