Applying the Jamaican patios phrase ‘likkle but tallawah’ is a succinct yet effective way to describe the proceedings of the Turning Tides conference recently held at the St. Augustine Campus.
‘Likkle’ in the sense that it was only three days long but ‘tallawah’ (strong) in variety of content, quality of discourse and diversity of interests, people and presentations.
The UWI St. Augustine hosted the conference in collaboration with Trinity College, which is based in Hartford, Connecticut, USA. Its sub-title elucidated the focus as being on Caribbean Intersections in the Americas and Beyond.
Co-chair of the conference and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education, Dr. Heather Cateau said that, “Turning Tides provoke wide-ranging and trans-disciplinary conversations centred on the Caribbean. The themes include identity, religion, culture, history, theatre, film, music, education, literature, ‘gangspeak,’ gender, sport and sustainable development.”
Co-chair Professor Dario Euraque in his greeting said that, “The Turning Tides conference actually represents a deepening of academic and administrative ties between Trinity and The UWI. There is a long history of inter-institutional relations between the two universities that dates back to the 1990s through an initiative that was nurtured with the great Trinidadian intellectual Lloyd Best.”
One of those agreements was marked by the official launch of Trinity House collaborative research centre. It is the on-campus home for a programme in which Trinity students take UWI courses, as well as courses organized and offered by the Trinity academic staff and distinguished Trinidadian lecturers. The Trinity-in-Trinidad programme also includes bringing students each semester to become immersed in local culture.
It is coordinated by Trinity professors Milla Riggio, Pablo Delano and Dario Euraque. Core courses are directed locally by playwright Tony Hall and Dr. Armando Garcia.
Some 20 Trinity College academics participated alongside UWI-based presenters at the Turning Tides conference. There were sessions open to the public on the last day of proceedings in which Trinidad and Tobago’s 2016 Olympic bid was discussed, and Professor Patricia Mohammed screened her documentary film, City on a Hill.
The conference also paid tribute to Peter Minshall on the 40th anniversary of his first band, with the screening of the documentary Paradise Lost. Christopher Laird presented the Banyan feature called Inside the People TV: Our Images, Our Stories, Money in the Bank; and there was a conversation with Pablo Delano of Trinity College whose exhibition, The Museum of the Old Colony: An Installation/ Exploration, took place at Alice Yard in Port of Spain and the conversant was writer and editor, Nicholas Laughlin.
At the opening of the conference, Harvey Neptune delivered the keynote address. A professor of History at Temple University, Neptune attended Siparia Boys R.C. and Presentation College in San Fernando before migrating to the US and pursuing his higher education. The conference literature highlighted his being the keynote as emanating from his grounding and experiences ‘as a transnational citizen.’ Indeed he projected the three days of the Turning Tides conference with all its diversity and inter-disciplinarity as truly ‘likkle but tallawah.’
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