10
UWI TODAY
– SUNDAY 13TH MARCH, 2016
Culture means many things
to different people; and is
discernible in art and creative expressions, manifesting
who we are – as Trinbagonians – in the world.
Dr. Suzanne
Burke,
lecturer in Cultural Studies at the UWI St Augustine,
provides the philosophical framework to support a Trinidad
and Tobago creative industry.
DanielleDieffenthaller,
film-
maker, and
Carver Bacchus,
environmental communicator,
demonstrate pathways to sustainable creative businesses.
The Case For Culture
“There are many examples of young creative
entrepreneurs who are approaching their craft in smarter,
more strategic ways. Just look at the winner of this year’s
International Soca Monarch. Aaron ‘Voice’ St. Louis is
a third year student at UWI in the Theatre Unit of the
Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA). St.
Louis is part of the writing collective known as Full Blown
Entertainment which has penned the last five SocaMonarch
winning songs. In 2014 he co-wrote the winning Groovy
Soca song
Too Real
for Kerwin Dubois.
“Another student, Keegan Taylor, who is completing his
MA inCultural Studies wrote this year’s RoadMarch
Waiting
on the Stage
for Machel Montano as part of the four-man
collective Badjohn Republic. This idea of collaboration is
fundamental to how culture works, and how our creative
industries can develop.”
Suzanne Burke, Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the
UWI’s Literary, Cultural and Communication Studies
Department St. Augustine, believes that developing the
intrinsic and instrumental values of culture are equally
important. She is clear that strategies for sustainable
creative enterprises need to be mounted: an enabling policy
environment; adequate resourcing of the institutions of
support; education and training in the core creative arts
and supporting systems; and incentivizing investment in
the sector.
“So there’s the challenge: to make sure that culture is
integrated with development so that cultural awareness and
sensitivity are evident throughout the society. We have to
address our disjointed approach to culture. In every area,
culture needs to be mainstreamed; to be acknowledged and
integrated in policy.”
Burke had an epiphany when she was Regional Manager
(East) for the YTEPP programme – to train and employ
young people – in the early 1990s.
“I saw the response of young people to courses in the
performing arts. They were discovering who they were in
the world. They were empowered; they developed self-
confidence; they learned life skills.”
economics and finance; media and broadcast; tourism and
urban development
.
More recently, in the 2014 Cultural Mapping Exercise
that she conducted for the Ministry of Culture, she
collected evidence that revealed that the arts and cultural
industry sector includes enterprises that have a variety
of business models, governance systems, employment
patterns, motivations and are at different stages of business
development. The study underscored the need for a co-
ordinated approach to the sector’s development.
Convergence and connecting will build the framework,
she believes, for eventual critical and commercial success.
“In government, there should be an Inter-Ministerial
Committee or a similar mechanism to coordinate policy and
programming action in the cultural and creative industries.”
Unusual and individual instances – like this year’s
winners for the International Soca Monarch and Road
March; Bunji Garlin’s acclaim as part of the vocal team for
Diplo & Skrillex’s award-winning album,
Jack Ü
- prove that
Trinbagonians have the talent. Some of what Burke calls “the
creative ecosystem” may be in place, but the whole fabric is
still to be developed.
She sees a role for The UWI in gathering the evidence
to demonstrate the pathways to success; even as she
acknowledges how difficult it is to teach, to supervise and
to research.
In her parting shot, she looks at the Carnival. She
played mas with Minshall for 13 years, and more recently
with K2K. “It can’t only be about turning a profit,” she says.
“Smart enterprises understand that cultural goods and
services are implicated in the construction of identity, the
promotion of diversity and the encouragement of social
cohesion. Strategic policy understands that it is involved in
maintaining equilibrium between the social and economic
aspects of culture.
“We must start with the belief that the cultural pie is
infinite; the society and its economy can be self-sustaining.
We must say no to the tyranny of the ‘either/or’ and embrace
the power of the ‘and’ if we are to move towards a more
disciplined and deliberate activation of the culture to a
creative industry in the service of our overall development
and well-being.”
The FilmProducer
In 2010, Danielle Dieffenthaller was guest lecturer in
the Film Department at The UWI. Her seminar, intended
for third-year students, was titled The Film Producer. She
brought experience and insight garnered over 20 years
of being a producer (director, script-writer, negotiator,
distributor and financial director) to the classroom.
Pathways toDiversification
The Economic Recession
Culture
Creative Business
has its Rewards
B Y P A T G A N A S E
Dr. Suzanne Burke
Wemust start with
the belief that the
cultural pie is infinite;
the society and its
economy can be self-
sustaining.
Later on, she went on to her Master’s thesis at the
Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, Netherlands, entitled
‘Cultural Industries and Economic Development: The case
of the Carnival Sector in Trinidad & Tobago.’
She returned and picked up the post of General
Manager at the Entertainment and Industrial Development
Company (EIDECO), an umbrella organization affiliated
with TIDCO aimed at developing the entertainment sector:
“It failed fabulously.” Figuring out why it failed led to her
deep investigations on cultural policy; and the PhD from
the University of Essex.
In a 2011 presentation on Treatment of the Arts in
Multicultural Policy, she proposes “convergence across
various policy areas and sectors” including: community
development; education and training; trade and industry;
