Dr Kris Ram­per­sad

The cre­ation of a Min­istry of Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­clu­sion in the re­cent re­align­ment of port­fo­lios of min­is­ters caught many, in­clud­ing it seems the named of­fice­hold­er, some­what agape. This, along­side a Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, has jus­ti­fi­ably cre­at­ed some room for con­fu­sion. Though much of the crit­i­cisms that have greet­ed the ad­vent of these two min­istries to date have hard­ly gone be­yond mere sound­ings of baf­fle­ment and be­wil­der­ment, there are in­deed some opaque ar­eas that can ben­e­fit from bet­ter stream­lin­ing. "Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and di­ver­si­ty" are re­flec­tions of each oth­er, while "arts and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism" has a dif­fer­ent res­o­nance to the stock as­so­ci­a­tion of "arts and cul­ture." If one was to flash back a bit, since the 2010 an­nounce­ment of Cab­i­net port­fo­lios, there was an un­easi­ness sur­round­ing the ap­pend­ing of "mul­ti" to a min­istry that has tra­di­tion­al­ly car­ried the ti­tle of "cul­ture" and to which was of­ten ap­pend­ed "arts." A Min­istry of the Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism was a nov­el­ty to us. It was a ti­tle that did not sit well, even with the pre­vi­ous of­fice­hold­er of the min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism him­self one who would be de­fined as an artist and a cul­tur­al prac­ti­tion­er.

Yet, hav­ing mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism as a min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio was high­ly com­mend­ed by some so­ci­eties still com­ing to terms with their mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, and where such a port­fo­lio is be­com­ing a norm.

Whether in de­part­ments/di­vi­sions/min­istries of gov­ern­ments, pol­i­cy mak­ing and ad­min­is­tra­tion units-cor­po­ra­tions as well-this has been a re­sponse of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty to a phe­nom­e­non aris­ing from glob­al­i­sa­tion, height­ened move­ments and mi­gra­tions of peo­ple with eas­i­er ac­cess to trav­el, all of which are chang­ing the eth­nic and cul­tur­al com­po­si­tion of pop­u­la­tions and over­turn­ing age-old sta­tus qu­os. To flash back to even ear­li­er times, in T&T, the port­fo­lio of arts and cul­ture has been tra­di­tion­al­ly un­ques­tion­ing­ly lumped to­geth­er since self-gov­ern­ment, and, in pre­vi­ous rein­car­na­tions, has al­so been ap­pend­ed to port­fo­lios of women, youth, sport, com­mu­ni­ty/so­cial de­vel­op­ment and var­i­ous oth­er per­ceived "soft" port­fo­lios. In re­cent times, so­ci­eties as Cana­da, Aus­tralia and Great Britain that have ap­pend­ed cul­ture/mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism to their arts ad­min­is­tra­tion port­fo­lios are recog­nis­ing the chal­lenge of this com­bi­na­tion. T&T has a long his­to­ry, ex­pe­ri­ences of dys­func­tion­al­i­ty in this, too, ex­cept we have not tried to analyse nor learn from them.

It is borne out in the loud nois­es that of­ten em­anate from var­i­ous quar­ters, in­ter­est groups, dis­tricts, eth­nic­i­ties and cul­tur­al cor­ners sur­round­ing in­ef­fi­cien­cies and pa­tro­n­is­ing ap­proach­es to our arts and cul­ture and per­ceived lack of de­liv­ery of suc­ces­sive Min­istries of Arts and Cul­ture-a name which it­self pre­sup­pos­es a com­mon na­tion­al cul­ture in a so­ci­ety where has co­a­lesced var­i­ous cul­tur­al streams and strands. The ner­vous un­ease that has plagued cul­tur­al gov­er­nance since self-gov­ern­ment, and stymied cul­tur­al de­vel­op­ment-eg still no cul­tur­al pol­i­cy though it has been 47 years in the mak­ing; or the reg­u­lar dis­tress about "whey pan dey;" laments over the lack of pro­mo­tion of the Car­ni­val arts-stem from lack of clar­i­ty in con­cep­tu­al­is­ing and vi­sion­ing the spe­cif­ic roles of the arts in de­vel­op­ment and the roles of our cul­tures in de­vel­op­ment. No one can de­ny that our arts have suf­fered from com­pe­ti­tion for cul­tur­al space, and in the com­pe­ti­tion for eth­nic space. Align­ment of the arts to eth­nic­i­ty has pro­hib­it­ed their blos­som­ing and re­strict­ed recog­ni­tion of their uni­ver­sal val­ue and uni­ver­sal ap­peal.

If lib­er­at­ed from cul­ture or mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism, the arts, which has been de­prived, shroud­ed in, and over­shad­owed by the politi­ci­sa­tion of cul­ture over the decades, can be al­lowed to blos­som in their own right and take ad­van­tage of the range of op­por­tu­ni­ties for their de­vel­op­ment in­to vi­able cre­ative in­dus­tries. It will al­so help to ac­cen­tu­ate their in­trin­sic aes­thet­ics for recog­ni­tion be­yond parochial eth­nic or cul­tur­al con­texts, for their in­her­ent uni­ver­sal val­ues. Sep­a­ra­tion of the arts from the cul­ture port­fo­lio can al­low T&T arts, whether drawn from an­ces­tral com­mu­ni­ties or fash­ioned from our mul­ti­cul­tur­al mi­lieu-from the clas­si­cal arts to our in­dige­nous arts-to re­ceive the kind of sub­stan­tive fo­cus of which they have so far been de­prived and from which has stemmed the sense of dis­con­nect and the con­tin­u­ous cries of dis­con­tent, of lack of ap­pre­ci­a­tion and of lack of sup­port. A Min­istry of Arts can ex­ist in its own and sub­stan­tive right, and al­low for a clear­er vi­sion of the role of a Min­istry of Di­ver­si­ty and So­cial In­clu­sion.

Part 2 To­mor­row