Make or break in a small space

Today’s column ought to have been about the regional symposium on ‘Violence as a Public Health Issue – The Crime Challenge’ which ended yesterday.

But because of my early deadline for submission of this, bungled arrangements for meaningful media coverage, and the absence of essential background reading, I have chosen to resume a discussion on converting our cultural assets into both wealth and social wellness.

However, before I leave the symposium alone (though I found the leaders’ roundtable … instructive), I just want to make it clear I agree that criminal violence provides an established path to public health crises. There is sufficient literature on this to at least agree with the main principles.

The political commentary on this particular point has, however, been so underdeveloped and near irrelevant that it is advisable to pay attention almost solely to what real experts say on the subject, based on a level of empiricism and scrupulous study. This cannot be left to amateurs, whatever their own political, professional or social status.

Calls for more guns, application of emergency powers, hanging people, increasing penalties, eliminating rights, blaming the media, and de facto vigilante civilian policing almost routinely emerge as predictable creed in an environment in which wholesome understanding of cause and effect is ignored or absent.

Now, therefore, for something about which I know a little, and which is not entirely unrelated to the above. Last weekend began for me on Saturday morning at Arnim’s Art Galleria in Port of Spain with a viewing of ‘Memoirs: A Sonnylal Rambissoon Retrospective Pt. 2’.

This is an exceedingly valuable exhibition for anyone with an interest in a wide variety of artistic media. Now, my saying so does not under any circumstance make me any kind of expert connoisseur or reviewer. I am suggesting this as someone who has re-entered the world of visual art following a decades-long hiatus.

The exhibition ends on Friday but there is an upcoming lino block engraving workshop on the 29^th at the same venue which references Rambissoon’s woodcut prints.

After leaving Arnim’s on Saturday, it was off to the Fine Art Market at Anchorage in Chaguaramas for observance of World Art Day.

Let me tell you: some of the best people in the world are artists. There I was with my phone scrolled to my Instagram account and some of my own modest work. Former journalist, Halcian Pierre, currently described as a “neo pop” artist was present with kind feedback, along with almost everyone else I spoke with.

On location as well was retired master broadcaster/communication professional, Percy Parker-Williams, with his vast collection of new artistic work.

There was also impressive young artist, Vanessa George, who claimed that a tabanca had driven her to some fantastic work. There was a fabric designer, together with sculptors, and work in oil, acrylic, watercolour, pens, wood, steel, concrete.

Having spent too much time there, I had to rush back to UWI for yet another Department of Creative and Festival Arts (DCFA) student music recital. Scores of young musicians, beautiful music, an audience spread out on “the greens” at the Creative Arts Centre in St Augustine.

All of this meant that I could not make it to Naparima Bowl where a Jazz Festival had begun with names like the phenomenal LeAndra accompanied by the National Steel Symphony Orchestra, Chantal Esdelle and Moyenne, Solman, and Rellon Brown and Dominant Seventh Jazz Band did their thing.

Anybody notice yet where I am going with this? My longtime colleague and friend, Peter Ray Blood, can rattle off perhaps another dozen events over the weekend that proved that many people are choosing not to stay locked away and unexposed to the explosion of creative power currently being unleashed nationally.

David Rudder and Comrade BC Pires were all week hawking Gary Hector’s ‘Naked’ production. I heard things went well. And, yes, there was more. Ask Peter. And there was also the launch of Desperadoes’ new panyard.

Then, yesterday, even as Caribbean politicians and experts dissected rampant criminal violence throughout the region, I was at Nalis in Port of Spain helping cultural anthropologist, dance master, and writer, Sat Balkaransingh launch a new collection of poems.

I thought about all the people in our small space who are missing out on much of this through both justifiable and manipulated fear. But my mind has also been on all the others who have chosen hope through the opportunity to witness creation rather than yielding to the spectre of destruction.

In this small place, people and things are both broken and made.