Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Far­ley Au­gus­tine has an­nounced plans to reach out to in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts in the per­form­ing arts to as­sist To­ba­go in ex­pand­ing its cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions, in­clud­ing in film.

He out­lined ma­jor plans to use the Shaw Park Cul­tur­al Com­plex to its fullest po­ten­tial as he de­liv­ered a $3.97 bil­lion To­ba­go Bud­get in Scar­bor­ough, To­ba­go on Thurs­day.

"We in­her­it­ed a poor­ly main­tained and un­der­de­vel­oped Shaw Park Com­plex along with the new­ly formed To­ba­go Per­form­ing Arts Com­pa­ny (TPAC), and we im­me­di­ate­ly set out to bring some struc­ture to the space. We got the Air con­di­tion­ing fixed, so now the space is use­able," he told the THA As­sem­bly dur­ing the near four-hour long ad­dress.

Au­gus­tine said that over the next fis­cal year, the THA pro­pos­es, through the Shaw Park Com­plex and TPAC, to un­der­take the fol­low­ing ini­tia­tives:

- pro­vide tech­ni­cal sup­port to pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools in To­ba­go for the VA­PA pro­grammes;

- pro­vide tech­ni­cal sup­port to the var­i­ous com­mu­ni­ties to en­hance the qual­i­ty of their Her­itage pro­duc­tions;

- host a Fes­ti­val of Per­form­ing Arts called Melé to show­case lo­cal plays and lo­cal cul­tur­al tal­ents;

- em­bark on a mar­ket­ing cam­paign to take the Bit­ter Cas­sa­va pro­duc­tion to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ences;

- pro­vide tech­ni­cal sup­port aimed at mak­ing the To­ba­go Car­ni­val a dis­tinct­ly To­bag­on­ian prod­uct, blend­ing the cul­tur­al nu­ances of To­ba­go with a con­tem­po­rary Car­ni­val flair;

- build out all per­for­mance and train­ing spaces at the Shaw Park Com­plex to in­clude among oth­er things: a record­ing stu­dio, a green room, LED Room, dance stu­dios, small the­atres, meet­ing/con­fer­ence rooms etc;

- ex­plore film-mak­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties;

- have a ded­i­cat­ed team that will mar­ket To­ba­go as a film­mak­ers' par­adise;

- cre­ate doc­u­men­taries, soaps, sit­coms, chil­dren's con­tent, pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion con­tent and cre­ative ad­ver­tise­ments for the pro­mo­tion of To­ba­go among oth­ers;

- and bring world-renowned ex­perts in the per­form­ing and vi­su­al arts to take up res­i­den­cy at the fa­cil­i­ty to pro­mote the train­ing of our young peo­ple.

He said they will al­so seek to trans­form Shaw Park Com­plex in­to an aca­d­e­m­ic fa­cil­i­ty where ter­tiary-lev­el in­sti­tu­tion(s) can of­fer their de­gree pro­grammes.

"This will be part of our de­vel­op­ment of Ed­u­ca­tion for ex­port; and, with­in the next month, the De­part­ments of Cul­ture and An­tiq­ui­ties will be res­i­dent at the Shaw Park Com­plex."

"Fi­nal­ly, To­ba­go's most ex­pen­sive de­vel­op­ment project is be­ing put to good use," he said.