Michelle Loubon

For­mer pres­i­dent Sir El­lis Clarke and Prof John Spence were ho­n­oured by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT) at its grad­u­a­tion ex­er­cise at O'meara Road, Ari­ma, on Sat­ur­day. UTT pres­i­dent Prof Ken­neth Julien made this dis­clo­sure at a break­fast meet­ing host­ed at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my For The Per­form­ing Arts, at Queen's Park East, Port-of-Spain, re­cent­ly. Fol­low­ing the for­mal­i­ties, me­dia per­son­nel were tak­en on a tour of the fa­cil­i­ty, start­ing at its Keate Street en­trance. Julien said: "We will be giv­ing two hon­orary doc­tor­ates–one to Prof John Spence, for­mer dean of the Fac­ul­ty of Agri­cul­ture, who al­so writes reg­u­lar­ly in the pa­pers. We will al­so be ho­n­our­ing Sir El­lis Clarke...first pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic."

He al­so spoke about the need to at­tract a pool of young tal­ent for the Arts pro­grammes, which are ex­pect­ed to get un­der way from March to Sep­tem­ber. Julien added: "It is quite an am­bi­tious pro­gramme of teach­ing, lec­tur­ing, re­search and per­form­ing, dance, dra­ma and the­atre. We have a com­mit­ment to meet those tasks in a short pe­ri­od of time." "Soon this build­ing...this Acad­e­my will be pop­u­lat­ed with staff and stu­dents. It is quite an ini­tia­tive." He urged the lec­tur­ers to strive for in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards al­though they had the chal­lenge of "start­ing from scratch." "You have to get young, tal­ent­ed peo­ple in the pipeline. It means out­reach. Go­ing out­side to pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools...go­ing to the pa­n­yards. You have to iden­ti­fy tal­ent. It is about cre­at­ing, push­ing them in­to ex­cel­lence," said Julien.

Julien said the Acad­e­my was de­vel­oped on the heels of ini­tia­tives like the Na­tion­al Phil­har­mon­ic Or­ches­tra and The­atre Com­pa­ny. To date, the Acad­e­my has shown its ded­i­ca­tion to the na­tion's youth by stag­ing a con­cert (No­vem­ber 17, 2009)–Cre­at­ing A New Cul­tur­al Ex­pe­ri­ence. Reign­ing ca­lyp­so monarch Hol­lis Liv­er­pool (Chalk­dust), Mo­hip and Ed­win Ay­oung (Crazy) en­ter­tained the young au­di­ence with their ren­di­tion of God Bless Our Na­tion. Sitarist Mun­gal Patasar gave a fine per­for­mance on the re­tractable stage. UTT's con­sul­tant Michael Cher­rie spout­ed snatch­es of Shake­speare.

Tour­ing the Acad­e­my

Lead­ing the tour of the fa­cil­i­ty, were se­nior vice pres­i­dent Oliv­er Flax and Benn Ram­nar­ine, se­cu­ri­ty op­er­a­tions man­ag­er of UTT. They were joined by tu­tors, in­clud­ing pro­gramme Pro­fes­sor Kathy Gain­ham, Rana Mo­hip, Son­ja Du­mas, Nicole Wes­ley, Mar­tin Ray­mond and Be­lin­da Barnes. They were all op­ti­mistic the emp­ty spaces would soon be fur­nished and oc­cu­pied with stu­dents of the arts. Cer­tifi­cate, diplo­ma and de­gree pro­grammes will soon be made avail­able. Ram­nar­ine said there are 13 class­rooms, two mi­ni the­atres and two dance rooms, which would cater to the stu­dents' artis­tic abil­i­ties.

He said the study of Ram­leela, pop­u­larised by No­bel Lau­re­ate Derek Wal­cott, would al­so be in­tro­duced there. "There is a cer­tifi­cate pro­gramme in Pt Lisas," he said. Dancer Du­mas said capoeira, a Brazil­ian form of mar­tial arts, de­scribed in de­tail by Brazil­ian writer Jorge Ama­do, would be in­tro­duced. She said they have al­ready con­duct­ed dance work­shops in To­ba­go. Wes­ley said they would be able to pick up the stage and take it to a venue. Eng­lish Gain­ham said she was ex­cit­ed about the ven­ture since, "There is so much tal­ent here. I look for­ward to work­ing with the stu­dents. I think this na­tion has the po­ten­tial to do some­thing ex­tra­or­di­nary."