Cities Safer With Art

A new UN report published last week, Global Report, Culture: Urban Future contains insights and concrete evidence of the power of culture as a strategic asset to actually create, “inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable human settlements and cities.” It argues that the best way to achieve that is to integrate cultural components fully into urban strategies.

That culture gives cities social and economic power, especially with the help of the creative industries, is not news to us in TT who have grown up seeing our capital city become the centre of one the biggest gatherings of all people for the enjoyment and celebration of our particular type of popular artistic and social expression.

Carnival puts us in a league of our own, especially considering that we have exported it to wherever we live in big cities.

Recurring attempts occur to extend Carnival creativity throughout the year, but the very transient nature of the Carnival itself makes that difficult to sustain.

Pan and calypso have had more success, evolving and bursting out of the religious bounds of non-play during Lent and very little play during the rest of the year to establish a new reality in which pan and soca have become big business and the year-round open pan yards have become creative centres in their own right.

But we know those traditional expressions of culture are not all we do well, and the output is predominantly seasonal.

There is hardly any permanent public art in our cities and if you count our architecture as art then the tale is sorrowful, as so many beautiful, historic buildings are gone. Deceased PM Manning had a strong sense that the capital needed to shape up but he was in a hurry and we are now paying the price of his impatience. For all that, his vision improved the environment of Port of Spain.

I am grateful that government identified certain arts for development and diversification of the economy, creating quasi-autonomous companies. Yet, a lot remains to be done. The infrastructure to support them is only slowly being put in place and other arts such as the literary, visual arts, dance and theatre remain outside of the developmental focus.

We should commend PM Dr.

Rowley for his personal interest in saving the poorly kept Cazabon collection and augmenting it, even earmarking precious monies in the budget to bring our seriously out-dated museum and art gallery into the modern world. Using art in public places to tell our history is essential, as the UN Report indicates. Recently, I learned that archaeologists have found the remains of US slave preacher Nat Turner who led a bloody revolt that ended in his hanging and dismemberment.

The place of his demise will now be marked and his part in the alternative slave narrative will be intensified. History is constantly being retold.

TT writers, Angelo Bissessarsingh, Judy Raymond and Danielle Delon have been reclaiming histories in their recent books. I would like the location of those hitherto untold stories to be marked so that we associate matter, culture and history. I would like modern art installations around our cities and struggling organizations such as our theatres and vibrant contemporary art spaces like Alice Yard, independent for 10 years, to be recognized for the value they bring to our society. Tiny, active, culture NGOs such as the literary one I run are taxed the same as state companies and so are discouraged.

Ingenuity and will can take you so far but arriving at sustainable, living cities is quite another matter. Public art is about social inclusion and public education, which bring positive impacts.

It is worth greater national effort.