THE HISTORICAL SUBVENTION TOWARDS CULTURAL INDUSTRIES Part III

Expanding the realisation of the new businesses niche

THIS article is directed to citizens with ideas and skills that may seem ignored and invisible except for the encouragement of some of our peers, but could not identify a life-changing audience to conduct a meaningful discourse. We must understand that process exists, but it must be lobbied for into functional existence. In local Industrial and IT as well as the Arts there is no scout policy for the identifying of homegrown innovation towards joint development with any state apparatus, executed on a template of Trademark, Patents and any form of Intellectual Rights inclusive. It just doesn’t exist; in fact, there has never been, though I stand to be corrected. In the colonial era, as with all colonial systems, manufacturing, religion, values and education were the sacred duty and craft of the Coloniser. The politics of today are a great case study of the post-colonial ‘Brain Drain’ experience resulting with our current most affluent expertise in the loudest forefront of the post ‘No Confidence Suspicious Motion’ (NCSM) national stage. The NCSM hounded APNU-AFC administration is not perfect, but in comparison, it has excelled in repairing a damaged nation. it has done in four years what lay in decay for almost 20 years before its term.

What this means is that since none of the opposing actors on the opposition stage have said or proposed nothing but the usual political ‘stock’ criticism from as far back as 1961, without any ideas or perspectives that can relate to  what the topic and interests of this article are about, our livelihoods, mechanisms to realise our practical dreams, then we must look to them for nothing. They have nothing in our interests to offer. Their sole objective is the power of public office and access to public finance, and to repudiate the laws that impede money laundering, demanding fiscal clarity and adherence to laws that were once flaunted through Political-Criminal allegiance. The objective of this article is to address the public consciousness towards the freeing from the dungeons of not knowing our talents and skills fettered by administrative indifference and lack of vision in crucial areas.

Politics and its negative nature of politricks will always be with us. There will always be people who are con-men and women at a formal level, even bringing some gifts, which are cheap bribes. If you’ve read the literature you will understand the concept of ‘Beware of Greeks bearing gifts’ with respect to the Trojan Horse trickery and fatal ruse. We live in a time when the world is changing fast, and change is always unapologetic. Because of administrative errors, bad customs in practice and social traditions many Guyanese are semi-literate and illiterate. The whys are to be discussed but the greater volume of the conversation must rest with salvaging the vulnerable, thus the Cultural Industries initiative in its expansion becomes relevant.

There are those with skills and talents, who lack avenues to remedy their social conditions. They are of all ages and across the gender bar.  The inherited social condition is a crucial factor in respect to ascending the veritable crab barrel. The ‘crab barrel’ is what it is because of a collapse of the lack of initiatives entertained outside of the box. A youth was arrested recently for stealing; he said he stole because he was hungry. I don’t doubt him. There was a time, now gone forever when he would have by social instinct gone down by the waterfront seeking ‘boy-wuk’ and most likely gotten it.

Talent and skill are imbedded in us by God or nature as a back up when manmade social echelons fossilised into traditions shake and crumble. We have had those rumblings continuously, from- The 1973-79 Oil crises, the fall and loss of our bauxite and other mineral prices over the decades. The fluctuating fortunes of sugar throughout its long history in Guyana. Today we face a threat from an even more formidable foe: the crisis of ‘Technology’ the demand increase on our income, both commercial and domestic, because of our new master-servantt relationship with ‘tech’. Where we are is debatable,- the demand to read labels and product booklets and to have a basic IT awareness gene has been activated. This is where Cultural Industries come in, not to undo, but to assist. Of course, legal procedures that do not now exist will have to be enshrined in the expansion of talent-driven economic processes. Economic processes that will see proverbial underdogs emerge within a new shield of protective legal guides, much like the Cultural Industries subvention; a reality for the first time in our modern history say, from 1900 to 2019.
I have outlined in the past two weeks’ articles, the competitive challenges that the Cultural Industries will pose to practitioners because you’re not buying and selling, you’re creating to compete, a new way of thinking must prevail, and the aptitude to follow the market consciousness around you as it unfolds.   The subvention must be looked at from a holistic perspective. I proceeded to knock at doors based on an engagement with the now diseased Derrick Bernard back in 1992. The only person at that time say from 2010 when I picked it up again was Burchmore Simon of Kross Kolours who I could call upon to come to a meeting or put together a document. Most gave up before trying, then why try? Most of the genuine persons who live by their talents did not even apply in 2019.

The late Odeen Ishmael wrote a sterling article as the PPP’S ambassador to Venezuela on the growth of Cultural Industries in Latin America and the Caribbean- strangely enough, in Kaieteur News, December 6, 2009, and not the Government’s paper. I also regret the fact that Dennis Ward ‘Bage’ a crusader for Copyright legislation passed on before the Subvention he doubted that would ever happen made its historical entrance. Al Creighton did a review on Mahadeo Shivraj’s efforts to bend ears to towards support for a local film Industry. The article-  Stabroek June 27, 2010 – did not say if he got anyone to listen. The world is changing fast; by 2022 the TV Industry will just not be the same, as my buddy Leslie dramatically informed me the only local content on TV in Guyana is ‘Death Announcement’. However, the conversation has begun…

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