The Gov­ern­ment has put sys­tems in place to en­sure the cul­tur­al sec­tor sur­vives the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and emerges stronger af­ter this health cri­sis.

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, Ran­dall Mitchell told the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) Gala and Awards Cer­e­mo­ny 2020 that there is a plan to help artistes and oth­er cit­i­zens weath­er the storm.

He said the Cul­tur­al Re­lief Grant, the Mi­cro-En­ter­prise Grant Pro­gramme, the In­come Sup­port Re­lief Grant and the Cor­po­rate Tax Al­lowance for the Cre­ative Sec­tor are just some of the Gov­ern­ment mea­sures that can be ac­cessed by cul­tur­al groups like TU­CO. The cost of the rental of state-owned per­form­ing spaces was al­so re­duced by 50 per cent.

Apart from pub­lic sec­tor as­sis­tance, he said, the Gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ed in­cen­tives, such as in­creased tax breaks for pri­vate sec­tor com­pa­nies which sup­port the lo­cal cul­tur­al fra­ter­ni­ty.

“…the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance re­cent­ly an­nounced as a fis­cal mea­sure an in­crease in the Cor­po­rate Tax Al­lowance in­cen­tive from $6M to $12M. What this means is that cor­po­rate Trinidad and To­ba­go can now in­crease their spon­sor­ship bud­gets to spon­sor more cre­ative projects or more artistes in the same fi­nan­cial year,” he ex­plained.

More­over, there is a plan to rec­og­nize and re­ward lo­cal artistes.

“The Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly laid in Par­lia­ment, the Na­tion­al Cul­tur­al Pol­i­cy which will be sup­port­ed by a Cab­i­net-ap­proved Na­tion­al Cul­tur­al Recog­ni­tion Pol­i­cy... As Min­is­ter, I will be speak­ing more on this in the com­ing months and how it will im­pact cul­tur­al icons, leg­ends and high per­form­ing artistes,” Min­is­ter Mitchell told the cel­e­bra­tions at Queen’s Hall.

The theme of this year’s Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry Month, which was ob­served in Oc­to­ber, is Ca­lyp­so…Be­yond Bound­aries and Bor­ders. These cel­e­bra­tions are held an­nu­al­ly to ho­n­our ca­lyp­so­ni­ans for their work. This year’s gala which took place on Fri­day, 6 No­vem­ber 2020, was held in keep­ing with pub­lic health reg­u­la­tions and was sig­nif­i­cant­ly scaled down. How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Mitchell as­sured the ca­lyp­so­ni­ans that the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts stands ready to sup­port TU­CO to en­sure they emerge stronger, bet­ter and more re­silient.