Be tempered by recognition and support of cottage and cultural industries
OVER the past nine years of the existence of this column, I’ve argued the facts of the reality that the impact of technology is the harbinger of a new world order. This is especially true with respect to how we earn and live, in conflict with how our social normalcy has been managed from, say, the nineteen hundreds onwards. If unchecked, even today, this will constitute mass unemployment, with worst-case scenario impacts on the nature of the individual survival thrust, with a changing impact on the national ethos that we have never witnessed or experienced locally before.
Guyana always boasted a respected cottage industry of businesses. One of the areas, among others, that we must now manage in the local interest is our forests and our diverse timber resources. I do realise that though they were not identified as ‘Guilds’ but rather as ‘Tradesmen’, both my Godfather, a plumber, whom I grew with and my father, a joiner and contractor, belonged to and were close to brethren of their choice professions.
To my father’s disappointment, I gravitated towards the arts, which aligned with my parents’ heritage through participation and achievements.
As a young man, the first bed that I bought was made by my friend ‘Bow-foot’, who shared a furniture workshop on Princess Street with two brothers. They were twins, but I can’t remember their names. In the Scheme yard (still in Wortmanville). On the Northern side, there lived Mr. Greaves, a one-man ‘wood hanger factory’.
His hangers were what we called “De proper ting duh.” Growing up, these were the areas that included all Tradesmen, and many youngsters gravitated to them. Shirts were locally made, such as Windsor, Mr Mod, and Alladin’s Cave, to mention a few. The oil crisis floored many of those bigger industries, including BATA and government projections.
Jamaica and Guyana were the first two nations of the Anglophone Caribbean /CARICOM nations to boast an Art School, and they both wielded their best against the dark manifestations that followed the oil crisis in their economies. The arts in its wide areas struggled, and many fled the country. Cultural industries included jewellery, craft items, art, literature, music productions, textile designs, book publishing, novels, and illustrated books, both fiction and non-fiction.
What has been a cry of especially the Craft and Jewellery producers is the wanton plagiarism of their ideas by the multiple copyists preying on their creativity. This is where the ‘Commercial Registry’ should come in, to protect and provide guidance and its interpretation. I doubt that there could be a law prohibiting this natural protection of a citizen’s right to benefit from his/her efforts. This is the dormant potential that is not discussed, as if they, or should I say, ‘We’ do not exist.
My dismay came years ago when I needed a drawing table and called the Technical Institute asking what their current price for building a drawing table was, and they said that they don’t make them anymore. I had to import one from Blick Art – a US art store. This was some 15 years ago.
These areas have lacked meaningful state observation and investment because the minds who can define and elaborate the contextualism are professionals in their fields and are not speaking the same language as appointed technocrats, who may find it challenging to interpret the stage of references deliberated. Nevertheless, there is ‘the other’ who can fulfil the necessary void because as citizens, they need their interests to be addressed. There are no known stipulations for barriers to such a practical and significant discussion.
