An Opportunity to Build

I’m a big fan of Rachel Price. This young lady has passion and sincerity in her voice. She stands out among other media figures for her dedication and thoughtfulness.
Her recent show about the National Academy for the Performing Arts was sentimental, sad, and really touching.
I agree with Rachel that the government has yet to sell its vision to the people and this void has created a great gulf between the dreams and ambitions of the government and what the people see, or how the people perceive what they see.
It is said that a successful leader makes his followers live his vision—this is not the case in T&T. the people here are victims of a political struggle between a government defending its performance and a hungry opposition hunting for the slightest hint of a flaw in that performance. A lot of facts are lost in between and the struggle diverts national debate away from actual work and construction to focus on the office.
In spite of this confusion, I still have not lost hope and still believe that tangible progress is being made, although overshadowed by political fighting.

Here is where I disagree with Rachel who appears to have lost all hope in the future of T&T. The chance to fix things still exists if we seize the historic opportunity in NAPA as the Artists Coalition of Trinidad and Tobago (ACTT) report suggested.

The report says that the great artists in T&T have been waiting for four decades to see their dreams about art academies and centers come true. The report says clearly that the creation was missing something, it didn’t say that nothing was created. In fact a lot of opportunity and success has been created, but the distance between politicians and the people and their indulgence in political fights indulge made them miss details that could have made the work more than perfect.

The artists did not say that 560 million was lost but said NAPA needed another 80 to make it better. NAPA is like a beautiful model who only needs a few accessories. In fact, some of the suggested alterations are not only unnecessary but also would do more harm than good. With all due respect for the people who wrote the report, they’re wrong on a couple points! For instance most of that 80 million dollar worth of alterations is for changing the sound and light controls from analogue to digital. People seem to have forgotten that this facility’s primary purpose is training students, and similar facilities in most parts of the world use analogue, not digital for this purpose. I think the engineers took that into consideration when they planned the work.

The experts are saying let NAPA be a lesson we learn from, and let’s not turn it to ruins we mourn. I would like to see UDeCOTT’s new leadership put together clear mechanisms for accepting constructive criticism and using objective consulting from experts in T&T.

I am a proponent of the idea of constructive opposition and I don’t like those who criticize just to look different and who always look back instead of forward. I wish that the efforts and the publicity that were used to criticize NAPA were instead used in a campaign to raise funds to add something useful to NAPA. Now that would’ve been a great initiative that shows that these journalists and opposition politicians actually care about building things right, but unfortunately I doubt this is the case. All we saw this far is a lot of yelling and tons of wasted ink and paper.

Let’s not pick our axes to tear down NAPA…let’s think about how we can be a part of something to make it better.