Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Dec 11, 2018 Letters
First of all, I want to thank Kaieteur News on deciding to focus on one of the tremendous yet relatively unheralded positive achievements in the 2019 budget, the allocation of $20 million grant towards the development of Cultural and Creative Industries.
This is an initiative with tremendous implications for both economic diversification and social cohesion, one that has not garnered commensurate media attention.
While the original concept for this mechanism, submitted in 2017, was not funded in this year’s budget, the government should be highly commended for ensuring that it is available for 2019. Government funding that directly goes to the work of creative artists is critical for the development of the creative sector whether in developing or developed countries.
And our artists should take serious notice of this allocation.
There are a few clarifications that I want to make with regard to the article as carried. The first, and most important, regards to the paragraph, “Recalling this, Johnson has expressed concern that the project, if improperly managed, could see the funds being misappropriated through what he described as a ‘cesspool of corruption’ at the Department of Social Cohesion.”
This paragraph is an unfortunate conflation of two separate points that I raised in the interview. The first relates to my on the record criticism of the former Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports prior to the change of administration in 2015 and its gross mismanagement of funding allocated for culture.
This is clearly a situation that no longer obtains – one of the unwavering positions that I have when it comes to cultural policy. The implementation of cultural programmes has to do with accountability of public expenditure when it comes to such programmes.
Were there the least hint of evidence of misappropriation of allocations for culture, I would have long resigned my position as advisor.
While I can perhaps be accused of my mouth being muzzled, objective evidence of the drastic change in the management of cultural funding can be seen in the absence of negative scrutiny of cultural funds, since 2015, by commentators like Chris Ram, for whom the spending under the Sports and Arts Fund was a perennial source of alarm.
For the past three years, allocations for culture have remained controversy and scandal free and have been passed without comment in the national assembly.
The second point conflated has to do with my standard insistence that even the most progressive initiatives such as this can, if sufficient caution is not taken, suffer from fairly avoidable implementation hurdles that endanger their long-term viability, particularly with regard to governance.
Minister with portfolio responsibility for culture, Dr. George Norton, has already given the assurance that awarded projects will “be evaluated for viability, impact and sustainability.” This is the sort of model that significantly distinguishes the Cultural and Creative Industries grant from its effective predecessor, the Sports and Arts Development fund.
The second clarification that I would like to make concerns the article leading with the concept note, which I submitted outlining the purpose for and rules governing the grant and the implication that the note represented the de facto terms of reference for the implementation of the grant.
The concept note was originally created in June 2017 as instructed by then Minister Nicolette Henry – it was successfully accepted by the Ministry of Finance under now Minister Dr. George Norton. As I communicated to the reporter, discretion for creation of the final TORs rests primarily with the Minister with portfolio responsibility for culture.
Reviewing the note now, there would be changes even I would make myself. For example, were I to revise or enhance it, one addition I would include would speak to the need to seek to build capacity in the creative sector before any allocation of funds. This and other suggestions will be provided to the Minister in my annual report for 2018.
Finally, I cannot underscore enough that people in the creative sector, creative citizens, take interest in and take advantage of this significant development in creative arts support. This is something that several people have lobbied this administration for with detailed proposals for such support from, notably, Burchmore Simon and Barrington Braithwaite, having landed on my desk as early as the first quarter of 2016.
It is the urgency expressed by the creative community itself that informed both the recommendation for such a mechanism in the Draft Framework National Cultural Policy (March 2017) and eventual concept note.
The Creative and Cultural Industries Grant is the most important state investment since the introduction of the Guyana Prize for Literature in 1987 and, managed properly, can result in even more tremendous rewards for both creative individuals and creative communities.
Regards,
Ruel Johnson
Cultural Policy Advisor,
Government of Guyana
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
Mar 29, 2024
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