Shir­van Williams

When many peo­ple hear about east Port-of-Spain, they au­to­mat­i­cal­ly think of crime, but the East Port-of-Spain De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Epos) has been work­ing as­sid­u­ous­ly to change this.

One of their ma­jor ini­tia­tives–the Com­mu­ni­ty Arts Fes­ti­val: Sweet Mor­vant–was suc­cess­ful­ly launched in Mor­vant on Sep­tem­ber 25 and the four-day event was a show­case of dance, dra­ma, song, craft, culi­nary arts, mu­sic, art and film.

The Epos was es­tab­lished by the Min­istry of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment in April 2006.

"We are a spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny which was set up with a man­date to de­vel­op and re­de­vel­op east Port-of-Spain, to im­prove eco­nom­ic, so­cial and phys­i­cal con­di­tions," Epos man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Deb­o­rah Thomas-Austin said in an in­ter­view.

"We do that in a num­ber of ways, through phys­i­cal projects like phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture up­grade projects, up­grad­ing recre­ation­al grounds, build­ing pavil­ions, fix­ing drainage and pro­vid­ing walk­ways where they didn't ex­ist."

This is the sec­ond time for the year that Epos host­ed an event to try and fos­ter clos­er com­mu­ni­ty ca­ma­raderie. The first was a Sports Day in May at the Mor­vant Recre­ation Ground, called the East PoS Sports, Fam­i­ly and Com­mu­ni­ty Games.

The Com­mu­ni­ty Arts Fes­ti­val was used to high­light the fact that the area has a rich cul­tur­al his­to­ry and this is what it should be known for, rather than crime and neg­a­tiv­i­ty.

"It's the birth­place of Car­ni­val and the steel­band. Peo­ple of the area have al­ways been in­volved in cul­ture in some form, just as they have al­ways been in­volved in sports. We felt that it would be a good way to show­case the area," Thomas-Austin said.

The project was a re­mark­able suc­cess not on­ly be­cause of the huge turnout but the fact that it was in­ci­dent free, the Epos man­ag­ing di­rec­tor boast­ed.

"While some bar­ri­ers ex­ist we be­lieve they are cre­at­ed by some in­di­vid­u­als for their own pur­pos­es and to a large ex­tent they are just ar­ti­fi­cial bar­ri­ers," she said. "If you find a way to bring peo­ple to­geth­er, you re­alise they want to come to­geth­er and they are will­ing to work to­geth­er. This was a way of peo­ple say­ing we are from the same com­mu­ni­ty and we share the same ex­pe­ri­ences."

One of the high­lights of the fes­ti­val was the art show which in­clud­ed work from pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary school stu­dents. The show­case in­clud­ed acrylic and oil paint­ings, wood­en and clay sculp­tures, Car­ni­val cos­tumes, draw­ings, pho­tog­ra­phy and col­lages. Some of the art­work even fea­tured the re­source­ful use of ma­te­ri­als like egg shells, ter­mite residue and wood shav­ings.

Thomas-Austin said her team walked around Mor­vant to is­sue a call for all artistes to par­tic­i­pate and even went to schools, so that young chil­dren could be in­clud­ed.

The Epos had the idea for the fes­ti­val but did not know where they would have the show. Luck­i­ly they were as­sist­ed by an or­gan­i­sa­tion called the Laven­tille East Mor­vant Res­i­dents As­so­ci­a­tion (Lem­ra) who are the own­ers of the Mor­vant Em­pow­er­ment Cen­tre, (the old Mor­vant Health Cen­tre).

"We were look­ing for venues and they were will­ing to let us use it and we took the op­por­tu­ni­ty to go in and do some work and re­fur­bish the build­ing and turn it in­to a space where we could have housed the art ex­hi­bi­tion.

"It was easy to see the sense of pride that the chil­dren felt when they en­tered the space and saw their work dis­played," she said.

Even artist, po­et, and ca­lyp­son­ian Bill Trot­man an­swered the call and dis­played some of his art­work.

Sev­er­al of the pieces done by the chil­dren have been put up on the T&T Art So­ci­ety's web­site, un­der a sec­tion named Mag­nif­i­cent Mor­vant Art Ex­hi­bi­tion. The art was just one pos­i­tive as­pect of the four-day event.

"Peo­ple want­ed to cook, so we were able to set up kitchens where that could hap­pen in a safe en­vi­ron­ment. We had dis­cus­sions with the San Juan Laven­tille Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion to help peo­ple get their food badges," she said.

Af­ter help­ing the ven­dors to get their food badges, the Epos worked with con­tact­ed the T&T Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute (TTHTI) and or­gan­ised train­ing ses­sions at TTHTI's cam­pus in Ch­aguara­mas be­fore the fes­ti­val. An­oth­er high­light of the fes­ti­val was a film called Sweet Mor­vant that was cre­at­ed by Gayelle and sev­er­al res­i­dents.

"One of the oth­er ex­cit­ing things that hap­pened is we got Er­rol Fa­bi­en and Gayelle the Chan­nel to work with some of the young peo­ple to train them in film mak­ing and edit­ing. Mr Fa­bi­en was tak­ing them to the stu­dio and to his home. He taught them to use the equip­ment and the tech­niques of film mak­ing and edit­ing and they pro­duced their own 30-minute film which was aired on a spe­cial night dur­ing the Fes­ti­val. They were al­so giv­en an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work at Gayelle."

Thomas-Austin cred­it­ed her project co­or­di­na­tor Michael Ab­erdeen for the idea to have the fes­ti­val and her com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer Arthur Lewis and his team for fol­low­ing through and mak­ing sure the event was well or­gan­ised and suc­cess­ful.

The dri­ve to get peo­ple of east PoS to re­con­nect with their com­mu­ni­ty does not end with this arts fes­ti­val in Mor­vant as Epos hopes to ex­tend the event to Beetham, Bel­mont and Pic­ton, ear­ly next year. How­ev­er the shows may be done on a small­er scale due to fund­ing as the re­cent­ly held fes­ti­val cost the Epos about $300,000, Thomas-Austin told the T&T Guardian.

"This is not just about equip­ping peo­ple to func­tion in east PoS, they are cit­i­zens of T&T and peo­ple from out­side east PoS should be able to come in and and take ad­van­tage of what is hap­pen­ing here and feel com­fort­able do­ing that. Peo­ple from east PoS must be prop­er­ly equipped and free and go else­where to ac­cess jobs and ser­vices."