Pe­ter Ray Blood

In the 2016 Na­tion­al Bud­get, de­liv­ered on Oc­to­ber 5 by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, while men­tion was made of tourism and sport, there was nary a word on arts and en­ter­tain­ment.

How­ev­er, cul­ture has been ad­dressed in the cul­ture sub-sec­tion of the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) sup­ple­ment, which states: "Lo­cal cul­tures will be sup­port­ed and en­cour­aged through the cre­ation of an en­vi­ron­ment that pro­motes pro­grammes that in­crease the com­mer­cial vi­a­bil­i­ty of cre­ative en­ter­pris­es. A to­tal of $33.5m has been al­lo­cat­ed to en­cour­age and sup­port the cre­ation of a na­tion­al cul­tur­al en­ter­prise.

"Recog­nis­ing the cre­ativ­i­ty of our peo­ple and the eco­nom­ic and so­cial ben­e­fits of the cul­tur­al prod­ucts and artis­tic com­pe­ten­cies, $0.5m has been al­lo­cat­ed to de­vel­op a strat­e­gy for co­he­sive ter­tiary lev­el train­ing and ed­u­ca­tion in two com­ple­men­tary ar­eas, name­ly, the core cre­ative arts and the busi­ness arts."

With Car­ni­val 2016 mere months away, Spe­cial In­ter­est Groups (SIGs) as well as pro­duc­ers and prac­ti­tion­ers in the arts and en­ter­tain­ment com­mu­ni­ty are anx­ious about what spe­cif­ic al­lo­ca­tions Gov­ern­ment would com­mit to cul­ture. Among the con­cerns of the arts fra­ter­ni­ty are:

�2 the pro­longed clo­sure of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (Na­pa), the na­tion's main per­form­ing show­place;

�2 no head­quar­ters for the steel­band move­ment; and

�2 un­cer­tain­ty of the Gov­ern­ment's al­lo­ca­tion to next year's Car­ni­val.

These are the re­ac­tions of some of the ma­jor play­ers:

Bruce Padding­ton,

TT Film Fes­ti­val founder:

"There is a para­graph about cre­ative en­ter­prise, but it is quite minis­cule; sup­port for arts and cul­ture was men­tioned in very gen­er­al terms. I didn't see any fig­ure that was specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned for arts and en­ter­tain­ment. I am hop­ing that there will be some spe­cif­ic ac­tiv­i­ties, that some­thing pos­i­tive will come out of it, like the fix­ing of Na­pa, and sup­port for the cre­ative in­dus­try across the board. I am es­pe­cial­ly in­ter­est­ed in film so I am wait­ing to see what is be­ing done in that area, es­pe­cial­ly com­ing out of a very suc­cess­ful film fes­ti­val."

Lor­raine Pouchet, Na­tion­al

Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man:

"First of all, the al­lo­ca­tion to the NCC from this bud­get is $262,619,248 which in­cludes a debt ser­vic­ing of $77.1m. There­fore, our op­er­at­ing ex­pens­es now have been de­creased by 17 per cent from the pre­vi­ous year. In 2014-2015, we re­ceived $312m of which we had to pay back $154m in debt ac­crued from be­fore. We in­sti­tut­ed in­ter­nal pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures to en­sure ef­fec­tive man­age­ment of the sums al­lo­cat­ed to the NCC. We in­tend mov­ing for­ward to fol­low the same process­es and pro­ce­dures and to work along with our line min­istry and stake­hold­ers to find a com­mon ground on how we will pro­ceed. Car­ni­val is just 122 days away and we are al­so cel­e­brat­ing the 25th an­niver­sary of the NCC in 2016."

Dr Hol­lis "Chalk­dust" Liv­er­pool,

ca­lyp­son­ian/his­to­ri­an:

"I think that over­all, the bud­get is a good at­tempt, as a stop­gap [mea­sure], to ar­rest the haem­or­rhag­ing of our rev­enue, and what seems to be a big deficit. I saw very lit­tle spe­cif­ic men­tion of the arts. This has left me with a fun­ny feel­ing.

"It seems that there is still no ap­pre­ci­a­tion for hu­man liv­ing in the sense that the sta­bil­i­ty with which we live is very much based on our arts. When you have no mon­ey and you are de­pressed, most peo­ple turn to the arts for com­fort. There­fore, Gov­ern­ment has to have a sig­nif­i­cant say on the arts in any bud­get."

Wen­dell Man­war­ren, 3Canal:

"For years we have been talk­ing about di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my. For years we have been talk­ing about what a rich cul­ture we have. It's time to stop talk­ing and be­gin putting we mon­ey where we mouth is. My un­der­stand­ing is that a new en­ti­ty to over­see the arts na­tion­wide has been al­lo­cat­ed $10m for the year. In oth­er words, 'de par­ty done'."

Keron "Sher­iff" Thomp­son,

mu­sic pro­duc­er:

"I be­lieve gen­er­al­ly the bud­get is two sides of the line. I was told that $10m was al­lo­cat­ed to Cre­ativeTT. On one side of the coin, you have the ad­min­is­tra­tion, which must try to bal­ance the en­tire na­tion's econ­o­my, and not specif­i­cal­ly arts and cul­ture. At the same time, peo­ple in the arts would fo­cus on how the Gov­ern­ment is help­ing their sec­tor. I feel the ma­jor­i­ty of what Gov­ern­ment al­lo­cates will go to the cash cow, which is Car­ni­val. Ten mil­lion dol­lars is def­i­nite­ly not enough mon­ey for arts and en­ter­tain­ment on a na­tion­al lev­el."

Ray­mond Choo Kong,

play­wright/ac­tor:

"I am not sur­prised, as the arts are al­ways ig­nored in bud­gets across the globe. In­ter­na­tion­al­ly though, sub­si­dies for the arts are placed by gov­ern­ments, but not in T&T. The gov­ern­ments and cor­po­ra­tions of 'First World' coun­tries un­der­stand the im­por­tance of the arts to the de­vel­op­ment of peo­ples and states, and that the arts can­not sus­tain them­selves.

"When we talk arts and cul­ture in T&T, we on­ly talk about pan and ca­lyp­so. We don't talk about the the­atre. The pow­ers that be seem to have a mis­con­strued idea of the the­atre, think­ing it's ei­ther about sex-themed plays or fam­i­ly en­ter­tain­ment. They have no in­cli­na­tion that the­atre is made up of myr­i­ad types of the­atre and that the vi­a­bil­i­ty of all us is im­por­tant and is based on the qual­i­ty of the genre of the­atre."

Lu­ta­lo "Bro Re­sis­tance" Masim­ba, Trin­ba­go Uni­fied

Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion

pres­i­dent:

"I am dis­ap­point­ed and some­what dis­tressed by the fact that the bud­get has not ad­dressed the ques­tion of eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, with spe­cif­ic ref­er­ence to the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try. If we are look­ing for new and pos­i­tive rev­enue streams, then the en­ter­tain­mentin­dus­try presents us with the best pos­si­ble op­tions."

Kei­th Di­az (Pan Trin­ba­go):

"It is a very in­ter­est­ing bud­get. Cer­tain men­tion was made of cul­ture, but I haven't seen the yel­low book to know how much has been al­lo­cat­ed to the na­tion­al in­stru­ment. In a time of de­pres­sion, cul­ture has an im­por­tant role to play in de­vel­op­ing our na­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in terms of eco­nom­ics, and so­cial­ly.

"Pan Trin­ba­go is not the Pan Trin­ba­go of yes­ter­year. We are now a busi­ness-dri­ven en­ter­prise and we have a num­ber of projects that we would like to part­ner with the Gov­ern­ment on. For in­stance, there's the pan lot­to, the pan fac­to­ry and Pan­vesco which is run by Clary Benn. We have not been wait­ing for the Gov­ern­ment to give a hand­out but we have been proac­tive in iden­ti­fy­ing a num­ber of busi­ness projects that we need the Gov­ern­ment's par­tic­i­pa­tion in. Com­ing out of what the Prime Min­is­ter said, we, as an or­gan­i­sa­tion, have to get up and work and strive to­wards self-suf­fi­cien­cy."

Vi­jay Ram­lal, Na­tion­al Chut­ney Foun­da­tion of T&T:

"From the lit­tle I've seen of it, I don't find that suf­fi­cient em­pha­sis was placed on cul­ture or the arts. Com­pare what was al­lo­cat­ed to the Bet­ting & Levy Board to the un­spec­i­fied al­lo­ca­tion to cul­ture. No spe­cif­ic al­lo­ca­tion was men­tioned for cul­tur­al or­gan­i­sa­tions like Pan Trin­ba­go, Tu­co or the Na­tion­al Chut­ney Foun­da­tion of T&T–all na­tion­al cul­tur­al or­gan­i­sa­tions that have been in­cor­po­rat­ed via acts of Par­lia­ment and ought to be ap­prised of their al­lo­ca­tion."