We refuse to be
What you wanted us to be
We are what we are
That’s the way it’s going to be, if you don’t know
You can’t educate I
For no equal opportunity (talkin’ ’bout my freedom)
Talkin’ ’bout my freedom
People freedom and liberty!
Yeah, we’ve been trodding on the winepress much too long….
Bob Marley
Much ado was made some years ago about the government “passing the IMF tests but not passing the people tests’. Not much has changed… except the administration, so it means that there must be something systemically wrong with how we are doing what we are doing. I was having a chat with about eight business students at a graduate level yesterday…most are in their late thirties, forties and early fifties. I asked them about their research, what they wanted to achieve with their dissertations. There was a central theme across all the theses – from management to finance to marketing and HR, across manufacturing, banking, IT, small business and the public sector.
The central theme was clear. The way we in the Caribbean are doing things has not worked operationally. The processes being employed in all the sectors they are now working in are only working variably at best. The ‘traditional’, often externally prescribed approaches are failing us on the ground. The macro and micro are way out of step with each other and there seem to be alternate realities in either sphere.
All the students identified that there has to be another, better way to solve national economic challenges and they are seeking to find culturally specific approaches to solve the problems they see.
Eureka moment for me – Culturization of economic life : Beyond the ‘classical’. The Jamaican Central Banking Campaign is an example…. yet that has its ironies – using popular culture to promote a prescribed route… Decolonization is a process I guess.
The Culturization notion led me to thinking a lot about the contribution of Jamaican cultural programmes and their role in economic growth and national development. It is time to measure this, to do an impact assessment. I have done really informal surveys and the responses have been remarkable. I have asked in every class I have had this year how many students performed in JCDC Festival. Usually at least 80% have performed in one category or another and generally never a bad word about its impact on them…always positive and fond memories. Imagine the cumulative effect on our development in 50+years!
This photo is not JCDC festival but the principles hold true. Hard to believe, but this is the performance of 100 ‘bad behaving pickeny’. This is not a pejorative description. It is a (pseudo) culturally specific clinical description of the most poorly behaved and badly performing children from four inner city schools in Jamaica. After a specific cultural therapy intervention including art, dance, music, drama, the children ‘flipped’ – another culturally specific clinical mental health descriptor. Their behaviour and academic performance turned around. The results have been recorded in Min of Ed funded CARIMENSA research and are remarkable. You should have seen their faces as they rolled up to the Courtleigh auditorium to perform. Most had never been in a theatre before – nor had their parents. It was wonderful to watch.
We continue to quarrel that cultural policy is deficient ‘nutting nah gwan’. Not enough a gwan, I agree with that; and certainly the policy emphases are fragmented and erratic… but sumpting a gwan… and has been gwaning on for a long time. The JCDC comes to mind. The IOJ Junior Centre is another. These are the programmes that need funding and support.
Corporate Jamaica could take them on and ensure every teacher running the ‘extra curricula’ programmes gets a stipend and all the pretty costumes get funded…the cost of buses that roll in for every stage of competition are funded, instruments are bought and the volunteer judges who adjudicate every year after year for dance, drama, culinary, music, speech etc get paid (properly) for their time…islandwide. – Who will bring their brand to that development project – or up the anti to fund the true costs? I have no vested interest… it just makes sense. And there is a huge potential for ROI. Thousands of children and their parents are a ready market…we need to place our cultural economy emphases on development…even as we look at entrepreneurship and put our money where our mouths are.
Looking for alternate development paths… on my mind as I continue the trod….
Yeah, we’ve been trodding on the winepress much too long….
#DHGculturetrod
Dr. Deborah Hickling Gordon is a Culture-In-Development and Communication Consultant. She is also the coordinator of the UWI Mona Bachelor of Arts in Cultural and Creative Industries though the Institute of Caribbean Studies, UWI, Mona; and Member of the UNESCO Expert Facility on Cultural Diversity 2019 – 22.
Deborah Hickling Gordon 
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