Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor
"Culture is not just the icing on the cake it is the whole cake." - George Lamming
MANY PEOPLE might not have noticed that during the week of November 17 there were three days of industrial action at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts, Arthur Wint Dr., St Andrew. Note 'college'.
Reports in various sections of the media referred to the institution as a school. That offended many of the sensitive artistic types at the place, (oh you know, those temperamental artsy ones like myself) and formed part of the assessment of my students that the strike was bigger than the institution. Soon come back to that.
Many people noticed the activity outside the gates of the college and were not sure what was happening. In spite of the placards and the police presence, someone actually asked one of the lecturers if they were advertising an upcoming event at the college. Well, maybe.
On the surface the lecturers took strike action to back their demand for the payment of outstanding pay increases agreed upon as far back as three years ago. The official position of the Government at the time of the strike action was that there was just no money to honour the obligation to the 117 affected educators. The grand sum required to meet the obligation was $2 million or the new housing allowance of three MPs, the same ones who granted themselves a 103 per cent increase and then asked educators to hold at three per cent.
TOURIST TRADE
The same ones who are now contemplating more for themselves. But that is not really the point. Nor is it the speculation that 117 persons don't really affect the noise level in Jamaica no matter how much noise they make; cannot really block a significant number of roads or affect the tourist trade, there not being much of it in Kingston. The point, according to the students in my aesthetics class, is about how we demonstrate whether we think something is valuable and worthwhile and how highly-placed public officials convey the value or lack of it to a wider public by the actions they take or do not take.
One indication of the undervaluing of the institution is the constant reference to it as a school. Higher learning takes place in colleges and universities and how can there be but one basic level of singing, dancing, acting and painting in the perception of those persons who see the arts as culture and see culture as the icing on the cake? If you are watching your weight you don't even acknowledge that there is cake.
Consider if you woke up one day, just one day, and there was no music on the radio, whatever your taste in music. No paintings to hang on your walls. No museum or gallery to visit. No funny looking people entertaining you in commercials and newspaper ads about products and events. No designers for the clothes you love to wear. People who repeated announcements at events rather than deliver them in the manner you find pleasing and memorable. You get the point.
Consider if there was no Kapo whose work could be presented to their Royal Highnesses as a wedding gift. No Bob Marley whose lyrics have made Jamaica an international brand name. No NDTC or Jamaican Folk Singers. No Trevor Rhone. And no local institution to send anyone for training in these fields to back up encouragements to attain the highest standards and keep Jamaica's flag flying or support platitudes for sustainability.
Quite apart from that, there are few other areas of study or endeavour that so touch absolutely everything we do and have the potential for impacting positively on everything that we become, from teamwork to sequencing of activities towards a desired objective to meeting deadlines without cost or time overrun.
The very tourism on which we depend is itself dependent on the arts, culinary arts, performing arts spanning regular entertainment to the storytelling abilities of tour guides, visual arts from photography to floral arrangements and fashion shows, architecture and every art form. Every job advertised for the tourist industry now invariably calls for training and experience.
The trained and experienced personnel then end up working for peanuts. For surely they jest. Or the rest of the society jests for the failure to recognise that artists work. And even without the training our performers and producers of art have been asking for a long time for recognition that 'a we bring de foreign currency pan de island'.
The rest of the society might not see this. Surely the Government does. What then does it consider its responsibility on behalf of the nation who pays it to ensure sustainability? We could begin with treatment that reflects the basic respect to which all human beings are entitled. This would mean that the college might at least receive the allowances which allow it to supply the bathrooms with soap and toilet paper and fix holes in the roof. It would be nice if maintaining the grounds for creative meditation would follow. Would $2 million a year be too much for this? Would it put the country under severe hardship to be able to afford this? Last time I tried my hand at maths, we would be able to afford this for 25 years for the cost of refurbishing the college which turned out not to be to the liking of the Governor of the Bank of Jamaica.
CONTRIBUTION AND VALUE
If George Lamming is right and if we truly mean to honour Edna Manley and show gratitude for the trails she blazed, the Government must lead the way in recognition of the contribution and value of the arts to our collective well-being. And this nation must find the way to broaden and deepen the understanding of how it is we come to be so proud when persons refer to Jamaica as the cultural Mecca of the Caribbean.
Anything less is an attack on the arts, which undermines them collectively from the basic level of the ability of the practitioners to feed themselves and pay their bills or afford them the dignity of finding toilet paper in the bathrooms at the institution which this year has attracted students from Antigua, Barbados, the Bahamas, Suriname, St. Lucia and by the second semester will see students coming from various parts of the United States, as has been the case over the years. And by the way, regulations also require lecturers at the college to have a basic first degree in their respective fields and a Master's degree to qualify for certain positions. Staff members are at this very moment pursuing higher degrees in foreign universities in order to upgrade the quality of the education which is delivered at the institution.
In addition, the college itself has benefited from exchange arrangements with lecturers from Holland, Columbia and the United Kingdom. But it has all been said already. The recommendations out of the 1986 conference on the role of the arts in producing the kind of individual in whom lies the ability for reaching the level and quality of productivity critical to economic success was held right here in Jamaica and attended by the then Minister of Education as well as distinguished educators, economists and public servants from around the region.
One student complained about being pressed by a journalist to say precisely what kind of job she could find upon graduation from Edna Manley College. A recent study in Canada on a degree in the arts found that it's a better ticket to long-term career success than university training in high-tech fields such as computer science and engineering. Often maligned as an impractical, four-year daydream in a world where highly-skilled workers rule, the arts degree is being linked by researchers to higher incomes and faster promotions in the workplace.
And this from Atlanta: The importance of the arts in education cannot be overstated. Research has shown that the arts transform the learning environment at every age and grade level, providing a vital link to improved academic performance and life skills.
Take a look at what the arts can do:
Stimulate and develop the imagination and refine cognitive and creative skills.
Strengthen problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
Reach students in ways they are not being reached and motivate them to learn
Increase social participation, self-esteem and understanding of diverse cultural traditions.
Have a measurable impact on youth at risk, providing alternatives to destructive behaviour and truancy problems.
Nurture important values and develop positive social behaviours.
Improve reading and mathematical skills.
Motivate students to excel.
If you are so minded check out what's happening at Dalhousie University in terms of the importance being give to the arts or any university of your choice in any place you consider to be 'with the programme' in this age. The interests of 117 persons and those which they represent might just be bigger than what happens at 1 Arthur Wint Drive. As it's been said already, let it be done.
