Amina Blackwood Meeks, Contributor
MINISTER PORTIA Simpson Miller recently stood alone - at least in Parliament.
Outside of that building in the people's Parliament, wherever it meets, there were many who stood with her. Actually she sat and abstained from voting on matters related to the budget, or lack of it, in respect of the Ministry for which she has portfolio responsibility.
However one interprets her action, the reason for it was clear, and here I paraphrase: 'De money no nuff and me caan do nutten wid dat.'
I wondered what the Minister with responsibility for Education and Culture would have said if she found herself facing similar questions and circumstances in respect of her Ministry.
'HAIR DROP OUT'
I happen to work in both education and culture. A few years ago I went bald trying to make miracles with miniscule resources to achieve any likkle ting in the various projects assigned to me.
And is not me one, plenty bald head people in the education and culture fields. Bald head as in 'hair drop out' but also bald head as in 'not Rasta' and maybe that is the problem, for the Rastaman understand how culture is everything and why it should be so treated.
Now that I find myself with likkle hair again I also find it going gray trying to comprehend how people who make decisions about the allocation and spending of money don't 'overs' that too.
Take for example an announcement about $42 million being assigned to 14 inner-city schools. That is supposed to make me joyous that poor people's children now have access to money, but I cannot, maybe because I have not been told, how that money is to be used so that we get value for it.
Is to fix the roof? Buy computers? Upgrade teacher education?
You know what I would do with it? Let go some storytellers in the system to expose the children and the teachers to storytelling as content and methodology.
How, for example, does an understanding of the story of the history and formation of the geographical location of one's school feed the self-esteem on which student accomplishment is built?
What would happen if Holy Trinity High School were to share its story with a school let's say like Oberlin? Suppose they were made to mount those stories in music, in drama, in dance, in art? Would this be considered a worthwhile investment of hardworking people's tax dollars? Would the Minister of Finance think he was wasting time on extra-curricular activities?
Maybe that's the problem, that we are locked in a paradigm of mistaking the cake for the extras. It might astound us if we were to quantify the contributions in dollar terms of the number of Jamaicans poets, storytellers and folklorists,
Choreographers and the like, who travel several times each year every year, in their personal capacities to share with our Caribbean neighbours the things we treat as extras.
Maybe one day we will wake up and feel threatened that all of a sudden tourists are making the trek to places we thought had nothing to offer but who valued and took everything we had to offer them.
INVEST, NOT SPONSOR
You know what? Maybe it is just some aspects of the education and culture that we are loathe spending money on. For the rest of it, money is no object.
I wish I had a way of finding out just how much paint get throw way down at Chukka Cove the other way. Or what is the total cost of the costumes for Carnival that will never be used again?
What is the total of the advertising dollars consumed by Bacchanal? What would the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) do with a fraction of that money? Or who cares, somebody dun sponsor dat arreddi.
That word has been taking up space in my head recently. Sponsor. Suppose we change it to invest would that occasion a change in the way we spend money on 'culture'?
I just imagine that people who have money to invest expect some returns on their investment. You know like the ad with the man playing golf or painting and not worrying at all about his money because he is confident that it is in good hands and turning into something worthwhile that he can enjoy and still be proud to leave for his generations yet unborn.
Something like that is how I think of investment in the arts and culture and artists of this country.
But I also think that it begins with a conscious understanding of the role of the expressive arts in social change and development and follows with an acceptance of a responsibility to consciously make that happen. It goes beyond an assessment of how many potential consumers in television land or by the side of the road will catch a glimpse of this or that banner, this or that product and may be persuaded towards its consumption.
Investment in culture is, in fact, quite the opposite, it is about production. How do we produce human beings who are confident, problem solvers, teamworkers, possessing excellent communication skills, able to work on their own initiative, with attention to detail and all the other extraordinary qualifications we see turning up in the Sunday classifieds for help wanted?
If this really represent the nature of the human resource base from which we expect to find those who will produce us out of poverty then we really should be looking to the arts, not as something to which we make a donation but as something in which we consciously invest.
Otherwise well-meaning entities such as the music and heritage committee will have nowhere to look for the pageantry it now seeks to manifest as that something different for which the world comes to spend its money in Jamaica.
Artistic excellence is not born overnight in grown adults. It has to be produced just like the human qualities it seems that some people are now expecting in the workers in their place of business.
If we are to have any of it at all, we must reconsider the ways in which we spend money on education and culture.
