GUYANA, from its earliest manifestation as a colony in the 1700s, has always had a venue for the Arts, especially the theatrical Arts. I have written on taking our drama festival to a different level with proper recordings of its best plays, but it was ignored, while the drama fraternity fretted and quarrelled with itself and failed to embrace the big picture. The lack of knowledgeable upper management that should have been able to arrest, iron-out and transcend the petty contentions, enforce stability and lobby for necessary budgets is a principle negative, and there are petty contentions, backbiting and counterproductive undermining do exist in the arts. Like all else in our colonial-inherited public service, the rabid itinerary of securing the borders of ‘De Job’ against real and imaginary incursions limits and excludes external participation. However, the result is that we do not have in this unprecedented time when a pandemic is demanding a life- or-death social adjustment of remaining indoors.
We do not now have that reservoir of recorded cultural items, though we have more than performed enough stage productions at both the Theatre Guild and the National Cultural Centre to have stored enough materials to package a minimal chat and show programme to attract interest and stay home, family/community involvement in watching people we know and can remember on stage, boasting our national ‘being’ with the excellence of our own talents on stage and concise, narrated literature supported by graphics and live performances.

We have failed to recognise, organise and open up to a broader discourse to advance and perfect what is in all a national treasure. Though unrecognised, undesired and held with indifference by one area of the political crossroad, and shelved ‘Fuh Now’ by the other side of the political crossroads who have the greater Guyanese cultural groundings at its innate bequest. That there is a need to activate and define ourselves through cultural interpretations can no longer be argued as to whether or not. We have the talents, yes, the un-kneaded substance, true, but lack the collaborative inclusion. No arguments can debate the benefits that culture, perfected and industrialised can merit as an employment sector and as a teaching source, the term Edutainment is not in my 1990 Oxford Dictionary (yep, ah need to update, soon, lotto back again) but Edutainment is a conscious and active term with educators around the world today.

However, edutainment in practice is not new, this area of instruction was an effective propaganda tool expertly misused by ever so eager political systems to miseducate and thus misguide populations, have been active since the printing press became a widespread technology, you need a reference, reader? Remember all those Eurocentric Jesus posters that used to hang in our homes not so long ago? People used to say prayers before them, that the Chinese make cheap calendars off today, were also effective instructive indoctrination techniques that worked.

This election period provides an effective case study with the medium of social media, that allows every coward a means to in the confinement of the lavatory, post the most hateful racist rhetoric based on interpretations of peoples and histories that are completely wrong, and in some cases purposely said because those who are instructing the lies which they call ‘Political Work’ are aware that the facts are not easily accessible to counter their hate narratives. Because the facts have not been packaged and disseminated in a simple reader-friendly way that says most schoolchildren have seen in one form and is now easily available a click away. This is an example of the lack of local content, no! Local content just doesn’t revolve around the entertainment and the direct edutainment arts, but for example, the effective illustrated story of the post Independence building of our highways, which believe me, that most people don’t know happened when it happened. Local content, however, is essential, because this is an existing organ in the anatomy of every nation, in respect to explaining who you are, what created your national identity, what sustains your imagination and interpretation of self.

COVID-19 has definitely exposed that the awareness value of this area was not arrested and the organs proposed to have some creative initiative if existing? Across areas of crucial expression have been found wanting. I came home some days ago in the middle of NCN showing a local film with the late Habeeb Khan as the star- ‘For Better or Worse’. I saw this movie with a lot of pride in the 1970s. Enrico Woolford is a senior head in the field, and he will use what’s there. Neither my youngest nor her older brother knew that at a period in the past we had created movies, or that NCN was originally developed to serve the eager private movie-producing enthusiasts, whose lobbying of Prime Minister Burnham resulted in the then Channel 10.

That era came to a pause when the world was plunged into the oil crisis. Sad, however, that there’s no visual archival documentation of this period on its almost all gone personalities to add to the volume of real local content documentaries of what was done, the limitations encountered, and above all the inspiration. In closing, I got in contact with Neaz Subhan to verify the information he had related to me that during the 2005 flood, NCN lost valuable catalogues of footage that was stored below surface. This would have included films and footage of plays, which did stun me, reasoning that we on the coast are below sea level, why store high-end valuable stuff in a basement arrangement?