The History and Arts Council –A precedent that worked

WITH the necessary changes at the Ministry of Education, with Dr. Rupert Roopnaraine being reassigned to Minister of Public Service, and Minister Nicolette Henry, Minister within the Ministry of Education with responsibility for Youth, Sports and Culture now performing the duties of Minister of Education, the implication is that all that has gone on before, the meetings, goodwill on engagements with Dr Roopnaraine and his staff and has had his approval will now be rendered obsolete, which will further dwindle the already meagre prospects of the ‘Arts’ to advance from the position of step-child of the State to full family membership.
To elaborate, for over two decades, the Arts did not have a collective authority that understood or had participated in any arts field. Dr Roopnaraine is a member of that arts community, being a film-maker and knowledgeable in its supporting areas, so in minutes he understood what was being said and the direction aimed at, and offered what support was in his power to do.
When I mention the ‘Arts’, I make reference to ‘Cultural Industries’ ‘Cultural Policy’ and the development of the arts towards contributing to the GDP. As it is now, there’s no indication that even the Ministry of Business recognises the existence or potential of Cultural Industries. So far, the only financial institution that acknowledges the potential of Cultural Industries is IPED.
President Granger managed, in his private life for years, a Creative Industry, ‘Academic Publishing’ that endured for 19 years, and compiled a wealth of never-before-published data on the history of Afro-and Guyanese people and villages through The Free Press publications that included the ‘Emancipation’ magazine.
The illustrated artwork that accompanied those publications were not borrowed. Eighteenth and 19th Century European etchings, but locally assigned renditions based on local research. To this he has the largest illustrated collection in the country on Guyanese History created by Guyanese. Yet these works were not supported by the then government, not even for school libraries, but was recognised enough to attempt mimicking the Emancipation magazine and undermining his efforts. Thus, Cultural Industries are not new, but because the concept was not inherited from the colonial period, and cultural policy that included IPR recognition was ignored, its development has languished into a concluded mindset for Guyanese arts practitioners that, on graduation, must leave these shores. And they continue to leave in order to survive.
Post-Independence blessed this country with the keen ears and vision of Forbes Burnham. CARIFESTA, what is now NCN, the National Cultural Centre, the Burrowes School of Art, the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology, and the National School of Dance all were put in place and managed, first by the ‘History & Arts Council’, then by the independent Department of Culture.

GHOSTS OF THE PAST
Why bring up the past and old ghost stories? One reason is that what we had then worked effectively within the tenets of the comparative age in which they they existed. The thoroughness and cultural astuteness of those personalities that administrated the arts then: The Lynette Dolphins, Billy Pilgrims, Denis Williams, Ms Hunt, Stanley Greaves, Dudley Charles, all of those people knew what they were doing and crafted policies that enhanced the arts collectively, debated with artists, and embraced new ideas that led to private art galleries.
Most significant was the sensitivities alive in their interactions. They dealt with matters in your presence, and within specific timeframes. The current custom of ‘promise and postpone till whenever’ was not in their operational philosophy. All that is gone today.
We have not, from the Hoyte years, pursued a functional replacement generation in the interest of the arts and its development. Today, we live in a different world; artistic mediums like comic books that were once frowned upon now earn billions for both the movie and merchandise industries. The marketplace is global; the jump from stage to film, though entangled in arenas of contract and license paperwork, is encouraging. Technology is both friend and foe, but more friend when managed.
The State must facilitate a rebirth of an independent structure that can allow for the exploration of ideas within an atmosphere of substance that encourages the creative mind to feel grounded and rooted to a purpose within his own national universe. We have no such entity existing and peopled today, and the possibility with what is does not seem probable.
I have always advocated for a separate State facility for the arts, managed by experienced minds. Indeed, it would require a ‘Council’ to attract and extract the best in every area, which is the only way a product can be produced to compete in the marketplace of Cultural Industries.
I was surprised when Ron Robinson was fired from NCN, though I must admit that I don’t know the details. I was presumptuous to presume that his experience in the arts would be tapped into to explore an arts-related component in segments promoting our creative world on our national TV, because he knows the territory, and the rites of the tribal culture of the arts. Perhaps the people down there never considered it. Whichever way we go, the global world of cultural economics will call upon us consistently to represent ourselves on its stage; the imagery will be expected to morph from scene to scene. This will become more difficult as our talents are pushed to other shores; plagiarised ideas will be supplemented, and only the indifferent will retire comfortably, while stagnation stares into the face of Medusa on the fossilised stage of repetition.

 

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