Dear Editor,
I don’t believe my qualifications with regard to lambasting pre-2020 PPP government administrations on the Arts need restating and I stand by every prior criticism I’ve made. It is with this in mind that I read your curious editorial “Disinterest and disdain” (May 11, 2023) which makes some sweeping generalities that in effect give a false equivalency between the Creative Arts environment under the David Granger APNU+AFC administration and the Irfaan Ali PPP administration; and all of that based on three letters of complaint by veteran creatives, two living abroad and one resident here.
I will not address the particulars of the complaints made by the three creatives involved except to say that Gem Madhoo-Nascimento is an institution in the creative arts sector, theatre in particular, and should be given due recognition and integration into any developmental initiatives of the state in this regard. That said, what is needed is structural, systemic support for the growth of the arts, not patronage to individual supplication. What is needed is policy put into practice and that is how any political administration should be judged on these issues.
The current government of Guyana this year gave out approximately $30 million dollars to creative arts entrepreneurial initiatives, under the Cultural and Creative Industries Grant, with a grant cap of $1 million per project; this is the second year that the annual initiative has been given out, funding a wide range of initiatives including film and music production, fashion, jewellery-making, craft, creative spaces, publications and digital creative projects. The original concept for this however was given to the Granger administration in 2017, in keeping with one of the objectives outlined in the draft Framework National Cultural Policy that I was responsible for, “Establish a national mechanism for the financing of cultural and creative industries, from the individual artist to sector corporations.” I believe that the initiative was finally budgeted for execution in 2019, with my suggested budget of $30 million cut to $20 million.
I am yet to see any public or private information on how much of that money was distributed and to whom and under what criteria and no one from the former administration has ever even acknowledged it. When I went back to work with the Ministry of Culture in November of 2021, the first task assigned to me by Minister Charles Ramson was to resuscitate the grant, which is now in its second successful year with the recipients publicly awarded. There is no similar mechanism, whether in scope, in total monies awarded, or in the size of the individual grant, in the entire Caribbean.
There is the issue of the Guyana Prize for Literature, again something I have been critical of the pre-2015 execution of. Founded in 1987 by President Desmond Hoyte, the PPP to its credit kept the prize making it a truly national institution in that sense, one that needed however serious reform to bring it up to date and to serve resident Guyanese writers far better than it had. When the Prize was held in late 2015, under the new APNU+AFC government, it was on the basis of a process already started under the previous PPP administration in early 2015. In my role as advisor to the then new government, I put it to the Granger administration that the slated 2017 Guyana Prize should be focused on the 30th Anniversary of the award, acknowledging Hoyte’s role in founding as well as the PPP’s retention in the spirit of finding common ground in the arts, and taking certain initiatives including the addition of a literary non-fiction prize and making it an annual award in keeping with other awards, Trinidad’s Bocas in particular.
This was ignored but the Prize Committee advertised the invitation to submit work under the old system published, as scheduled, in early 2017. The entire year would pass with no announcement of a shortlist and all my internal queries with regard to the status of the Prize ignored. Curiously, in an article published on iNews Guyana in January of 2018, “Gov’t denies withholding 2017 funding for Guyana Prize for Literature”, then Minister Dr. George Norton claimed that he had “a vested interest in the Guyana Prize and has been seeking information from both the Secretary to the Committee, Al Creighton and the Cultural Policy Advisor, Ruel Johnson.” One would suppose that the good Minister did not receive the multiple requests for meetings with him on both the Prize in particular (which I had nothing to do with) and the long-created Draft Framework National Cultural Policy. My requests for such meetings would be pushed aside for the entire year.
In November of 2018, I received a BCCed e-mail from Dr. Paloma Mohammed to my personal account, addressed to “Dear Guyanese Author, Publisher or Literary Activist” informing me and the presumptive other recipients that: “The Ministry of Presidency, Department of Social Cohesion, Culture, Youth and Sport in collaboration with the University of Guyana, The Theater Guild of Guyana and UNESCO’s Guyana National Commission will host a one day Forum on Literary Arts in Guyana.” Note that at the time I was direct Advisor to the Minister with portfolio responsibility for Social Cohesion, Culture, Youth and Sport; had since February of 2017 submitted a full draft policy that dealt with the Guyana Prize and Guyanese writing; had made by that time easily a dozen requests to meet with the Minister on those issues; and was a two-time Guyana Prize winner directly in the employ of the Ministry. In no way was I informed in my professional capacity that the forum was being planned, nor was I invited to address the very issues that I was employed to address, and effectively had addressed, at this forum put together by the Ministry at which I was employed.
The findings of this Forum have never been made public, but a few months later, with the apparent full sanction of the Ministry of the Presidency, the mandate of the Forum organisers was expanded to include national cultural policy as a whole, yet no Prize was held and no answers given about the missing 2017 awards, and of course no follow up consultation on literature or national cultural policy. The Guyana Prize for Literature was brought back this year after eight years of absence and with no prize held under the effective administration of APNU+AFC. While still very much a work in progress, thankfully some of the reforms originally intended for the 2017 awards have been included in 2023, with the non-fiction award and with the Prize now being annual instead of biennial.
Those are just two examples of deliberate, often comical and senseless subterfuge against the creative arts environment under the APNU+AFC administration and emanating directly from the Ministry of the Presidency under Granger, and which have found correction under the current government. Space does not allow for the inclusion of much more serious but complex examples, from the refusal to take the Draft National Cultural Policy to national consultation despite it being completed since February of 2017; refusal to support a prepared submission of a UNESCO Quadrennial Periodic Report under the 2005 Convention, a prerequisite for accessing funding under the International Fund for Cultural Development; the refusal directly from Granger himself to having representation at the EU-ACP Meeting on Culture in Niger in November, 2019, and at a preliminary CARIFORUM meeting in St. Kitts in July of that year, both of which were fully externally funded; and the throwing away of an assured US$3 million grant from the government of Mexico under the Acuerdo de Yucatan intended to construct a building to house an actual Institute of Creative Arts.
I suspect the engineering of false equivalency in a grand editorial titled “Disinterest and Disdain” based on three letters to the editor, is far easier than actual basic reportorial legwork on the structural issues that have impacted the cultural and creative arts environment in this country, inclusive of actions by policymakers that either helped or harmed the environment. If Stabroek News is ever interested in the latter path, I can easily assist in pointing to relevant critical information, much of it readily available in the public domain. After all, the answers to the many of the current problems are right before our eyes, if we could but see them.
Sincerely,
Ruel Johnson
Technical Officer on Culture,
Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport
