“Today we celebrate what you have achieved, look forward to what you will achieve and acknowledge the hard work that has brought you to this point.” Those were the words directed to a group of developing artists, dancers, dramatists, musicians, writers, filmmakers, creative craft workers and designers by the Institute of Creative Arts (ICA) on the occasion of its Eighth Convocation last Thursday evening.
Together, the four schools of the growing institute initiated into professional practice a graduating class of more than 80 students in a very wide range of creative disciplines. Those four schools are the National School of Dance, the E R Burrowes School of Art, the National School of Music and the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama, which have been offering training through several programmes and courses.
It was an evening exceptionally rich in performance as it was in formal ceremony, colour, vivified by the energy from highspirited graduands and wise words from high officials. The celebration of what was achieved was incorporated into the Report read by Director of Culture Tamika Boatswain in her capacity as Principal of the ICA. The importance of planning and looking forward to “what you will achieve” was a theme in the feature address by Minister of Culture Charles Ramson Jnr. The “hard work that has brought [them] to this point” was reviewed by the best graduating students in their valedictory speeches.
Boatswain summarised the aims and successes of the four schools over the past two academic years, which included new and innovative programmes and courses resulting in training for additional sets of creative artists in a widening and modernised industry. This helped to bring about a sizable core of graduands over the various fields. However, at the same time, she reminisced on the fact that “the best laid schemes of mice and men gang aft agley” and appraised some of the difficulties encountered along the way,
Minister Ramson recalled a bit of the history of the ICA from its inauguration in 2014 and the attention paid to the work in progress over the very recent years. Emphasis was placed on the relevance of training in the arts and the recognition accorded such learning and technical accomplishment. It added a bit more meaning to the Convocation Ceremony as a ritual cognition that persons are a bit more qualified in the disciplines and also that this involved not only artistic talent but a knowledge of theory and the application of academic study to the art. The minister explained the work being done in the registration and accreditation of the ICA and the formal acknowledgement of international recognition. The Department of Culture has been facilitating the process and the documentation necessary to achieve this.
The history of the ICA goes a little further back, however, and it is as interesting as it is instructive. All four schools predate the ICA, which was created in 2014 as an umbrella institution bringing them together in a kind of collegiate system. To date, they have retained their individual identities while the overall regulatory and authoritative body was being constructed and shaped. The collegiate relationship currently obtains while an institution is developing that will resemble the model set by the Edna Manley Cultural Training Centre in Jamaica which amalgamated the old Jamaica School of Art and Jamaica School of Music with the newer Jamaica School of Drama and Jamaica School of Dance.
In Guyana the School of Dance (NSD) came into being in 1974 and very quickly developed and attached a National Dance Company in 1979. This arose from a number of international, geo-political developments and resulting alliances between Guyana as a new republic and Cuba, and Haiti. It was also a spinoff of Carifesta, founded in Guyana in 1972 in the midst of similar regional geo-politics. The focus on training in dance was very specifically a result of the Haiti and Cuba bilateral connections. For decades after, this caused dance in Guyana to progress ahead of other performing arts because of the existence of formal training. Soon there were also many private companies, and even private dance schools, out of which the Nrityageet company of the Shah sisters and the Naya Zamana company with the Persaud sisters stood out. Many others mushroomed and faded, with the Kreative Arts initiative of the Esther and Jonathan Hamer team one of the few still strong.
The dance school immediately became attached to the ICA in 2014 and soon began offering its certificate and diploma programmes. Previously, the NSD offered an extensive programme from nursery all the way up to advanced covering several years, but apart from a short-lived course for dance teachers, there was no formal certification. Now dancers can enrol in the ICA and earn certificates and diplomas. There were quite a few dancers graduating with certificates at the Eighth Convocation. Of course, the extensive menu of learning to dance from beginners through various levels up to the advanced still continues – so the dance school has a life outside of the ICA courses.
The E R Burrowes School of Art (BSA) was established in 1975 and artist, archaeologist, anthropologist, novelist Denis Williams is accredited with its founding. Williams, whose painting “Human World” was the first work of art which started off the National Collection, served for a long time as national director of art. Burrowes, the distinguished painter after whom the school was named, ran the previous informal training institution – the Working People’s Art Class. Several of the leading artists in Guyana graduated from the BSA over its many decades of existence. This includes the current administrator of the school, prize-winning sculptor Ivor Thom.
The BSA, since its inception, has always had diploma and certificate programmes and these stood as the only formal training available locally until the University of Guyana began offering Art as a minor and then a bachelor’s, as well as an associate degree. The ICA has now adopted the BSA diploma and certificate programmes. Within those, the variety of disciplines available is fascinating, and this was vividly indicated in the recent convocation.
The School of Music is one of the relatively new establishments, which was preceded by private tuition and foreign examinations. Many accomplished private music teachers served those wanting to learn the art, and while music was a subject in many schools it does not have a record of having taken many students very far. There has never been a shortage of practitioners in Guyana – players of instruments and singers, but there was no local or regional formal certification until the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) introduced Music as a subject. Then, even with CXC available, most trained Guyanese musicians took the foreign exams such as the various grades leading up to the LRSM. Examiners came from England to Guyana to carry out the testing of candidates.
Even when the music school came into being in 2010 it trained students for those overseas exams. With the opening of the ICA, courses were re-designed to create the ICA diploma and certificate. There were graduates in those programmes last Thursday. Yet, there are still many students who study for the London-based exams. The music school, therefore, runs courses concurrently for the ICA certification and separately for the foreign exams.
The youngest of the four schools is the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama (NSTAD) which was born in 2013. Right away it began offering the NSTAD diploma and certificate and had its first set of graduates in 2013. In fact, it was the NSTAD Convocation that was taken over by the ICA when it came into existence. The drama school aligned its programmes with what obtained in the Caribbean with an articulation in which the diploma was consistent with first year university, a course of study that would lead to the associate degree followed by the bachelor’s degree. That still informs the current structure of programmes.
Prior to this no formal training existed locally except for what was done at the University of Guyana running for a number of years. That was the minor in Drama that students could do while pursuing a major in another subject area. Before that, there was only the famous informal workshop and practical experience that trained several super-star names at the Theatre Guild during its Golden Age in the 1960s to 1970s.
The original conception for the ICA included five or six schools, because creative writing, film and media arts were drafted in the plan. But these never materialised. Discussions took place in the Department of Culture out of which the drama school created the diploma programme in Creative Writing. Before that, there was only a minor in Creative Writing at the UG, which also ran for a number of years and faded out. It was at one time run by the very distinguished Martin Carter. The NSTAD courses have been in progress since 2017.
Similar developments also took place in film and animation at NSTAD. The drama school took on courses in film to fill the local gap, and students could do one option in Introduction to Film until the Specialisation in Film developed, followed by the Technical Certificate in Film, which saw success with seven graduates at the 2023 Convocation. The drama school also seized the opportunity to offer courses in Animation, starting with an option available to all students.
What is to be particularly noted is the quality and impact of the performances by graduates and students of the four schools which were exceptional. Each school presented a performance and each one served as excellent advertising for what could be learnt and what the students could produce after following a programme of study. It was a reminder that they were being trained for practice in the real world of the arts.
Tutor and choreographer Vivienne Daniel was responsible for the dance titled “The Dream” performed by graduands and students of the School of Dance Jeneal Batson, Jasmin Johnson, Akheela Hernandez, Aniah Doris and Lekeziah Grant. This was in close tandem with the theme of the Convocation and incorporated images of dreams, aspirations and reaching for the (un)obtainable. The dancers displayed a high degree of virtuosity with good form and balance, making excellent and appropriate use of space in which they expressed themselves to the fullest, communicating a pleasing variety of grouping, coordination and imagery. It was a competent understanding of space, rhythm and symbolism that adequately represented the school.
Not many would have expected the school of art to present an item, but the disciplines followed by students at the BSA include fabrics, textile design and jewellery. They performed an exhibition of fashion called “Fine Threads” which was an exquisite show of couture, designed and made by the graduands.
The audience could not have asked for a more eloquent, well shaped and excellently performed exhibit of the art of spoken word than that which was presented by graduand in Creative Writing Carlene Gill Kerr on behalf of NSTAD. Her “I See You” touched on some of the themes articulated by speakers at the Convocation and led the audience into an illustration of the inter-relationship between writing and stage performance that meet in the crafting and delivery of spoken word. It was moving and effective.
Most of the music graduands were successful in a programme of Steel Pan Performance and the expertise they gained in this area was very impressively on show. The duo of Don Johnson and Detry Dey played on the pan the well known composition “Oh Beautiful Guyana”. They interpreted the poem belonging to the period when Guyanese poetry was just finding its voice and identity as Guyanese poetry. “Oh Beautiful Guyana” is a poem by Walter McA Lawrence written in the 1930s to 1940s and then later put to music by the notable Guyanese composer Valerie Rodway.
The celebration of the Eighth Convocation served as an articulate and representative reminder of what can be achieved after training in the arts. It was a very appropriate and rewarding focus on both the arts and the state of the arts.
