Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

In­vest­ing in the arts, in­clud­ing pub­lish­ing lo­cal au­thors, is among the eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion strate­gies that Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship po­lit­i­cal leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has en­dorsed.

"When I hear the sto­ries of cit­i­zens who tell me they can write mu­sic, po­et­ry, short sto­ries, es­says, fic­tion, books, but they have nowhere and no one to pub­lish them, it breaks my heart," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said. "The re­al­i­ty is that as a young de­vel­op­ing na­tion and re­gion... we can­not af­ford to be de­nied the in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal some of these peo­ple pos­sess, just be­cause they can­not get their work to see day­light."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was speak­ing dur­ing yes­ter­day's launch of a book in her ho­n­our, called Through The Po­lit­i­cal Glass Ceil­ing: Race to Prime Min­is­ter­ship, by Trinidad and To­ba­go's First Fe­male. The launch took place yes­ter­day at Movi­eTowne in Port-of-Spain. Dr Kris Ram­per­sad com­piled the book, which fea­tured se­lect­ed speech­es from Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The in­cum­bent Siparia MP not­ed that the pro­ceeds of the launch would go to­wards "set­ting the ball rolling" to help the works of lo­cal au­thors.

She added that the pro­ceeds would help lo­cal au­thors to get mar­ket ac­cess and ex­po­sure. "We have a sit­u­a­tion where a coun­try and a re­gion of such di­verse tal­ent in writ­ing and act­ing and mu­sic–a re­gion and coun­try that has pi­o­neered and found­ed so­ca, reg­gae and which has, his­tor­i­cal­ly, pre­sent­ed some of the best aca­d­e­mics, writ­ers and in­tel­lec­tu­als in our short his­to­ry–that so­ci­ety and re­gion has an un­der-de­vel­oped and al­most iron­ic pub­lish­ing in­dus­try."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was time Gov­ern­ment re­alised that in­vest­ing in the arts was "a bril­liant eco­nom­i­cal strat­e­gy" that di­ver­si­fied the econ­o­my. She added that it would al­so pro­mote em­ploy­ment, gen­der equal­i­ty and re­duce crime, since it al­lowed young peo­ple an op­por­tu­ni­ty to de­vel­op their cre­ativ­i­ty and make a ca­reer. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said that bet­ter in­vest­ment in de­vel­op­ing the arts in T&T would show­case and pro­mote the na­tion's tourism in the re­gions across the world. "I have al­ways held true this need to sup­port for T&T and Caribbean in­dige­nous re­search and pub­li­ca­tions in fic­tion and non-fic­tion, as well as in video, so we could counter the neg­a­tive imag­ing of our so­ci­eties."