The problems with NAPA

March 15, 2010 by Edmund Gall

A report entitled The Tragedy & The Hidden History of NAPA is currently being circulated online.  Written by Rubadiri Victor, President of the Artists Coalition of Trinidad and Tobago (ACTT), it presents his (and/or his organisation's) views on the history of the development of T&T's National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA), concerns about its flagship building (the NAPA Centre) at Queens Park South in Port of Spain, and what it means for T&T's culture.

I'm still digesting the report but after a first reading, some things are disconcerting.

Firstly, the community of T&T's artists are very much hurt by the government's lack of consultation with them in designing the facility and continued lack of publication of the national cultural policy.  These are minor pillars, though, on the foundation of continuous and repeated sidelining and disrespectful treatment of the community by multiple governments over the course of nearly five decades.  For a country that always described itself internationally based on its unique culture, it smacks of duplicity.

Secondly, if the examples of the NAPA Centre's design errors highlighted in the document are true, then the Prime Minister should immediately retract all his statements that the facility is world class and replace them by the more fuller description of world class mess.  Some of the issues are too basic to be believed, e.g. having instructions for hundreds of switches that control electrical elements written in Chinese and not English.

Thirdly, Mr Victor was concerned about the lack of support in getting the message out via T&T's traditional media:

This coincided with the Hon. Minister of Works and Transport's call for the media to stop being unbiased.  Note, though, that I learnt about ACTT's report from three media houses, i95.5fm (Citadel), Trinidad Guardian, and the Newsday, which allowed me to find the ACTT's facebook page and online links to the document.  Maybe the ACTT will get more support now because everyone is scrambling to get dirt on UDeCOTT.  In an ideal society, this shouldn't be so.

Fourthly, Mr Victor noted that he was personally harmed in relation to this issue.  As a representative of the ACTT, he twice appeared before the Uff Commission of Inquiry into the construction sector and questioned ex-Executive Chairman, Calder Hart, about the NAPA.  His laptop was subsequently stolen on each occasion.  The first laptop was taken from his friend's car trunk (as an information security professional, I discourage storing laptops in vehicles, including trunks); the second was stolen at gun-point from his office by someone who specifically asked for him and took only the laptop.  He implies that the timing is significant.  I'm wondering if a culture of fear led to Mr Victor publishing this report online and with such haste that many typographical/formatting errors were left uncorrected.

Lastly, I'm wondering if the artists contributed to their own treatment.  For example, Mr Victor lamented that despite warning the government(s) since 2000 of the need to record the stories, traditions and knowledge of 20,000 "VIP Elders" by 2010, nothing was done.  As a result, 17,000 of these Elders have since died, leaving many traditions on the "brink of extinction and collapse" and the resulting curriculum at the Academy at risk.  I'm wondering whether the ACTT itself did anything to record these traditions, or if the ACTT is just a mouthpiece for the artists.  In other words, could the over-reliance by artists on governments for getting anything done have fed their sense of power to treat artists with such disrespect?  Is this similar to lifelong supporters of the PNM in Laventille being perenially maltreated?  In the same document, Mr Victor refers to another facility being built at Shaw Park in Tobago which is incorporating all the artists' advice that UDeCOTT and the government ignored with NAPA.  This Tobago facility has the full support of the ACTT, but it is unclear from the document whether this is being built by UDeCOTT or some other private organisation.  If it is being built by a private organisation, what actions by the ACTT led to that experience being so different and positive to the one for NAPA?

Read the document and form your own views.  I'm hoping that the accusations are fully investigated and that, if they are true, that the powers that be are stung into changing their reprehensible treatment of our artists.

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