Paula Lindo – Our histories, stories, present, future.

Three T&T arts practitioners – Patrice Briggs of Arts-in-Action, Damien Whiskey, who portrays the Midnight Robber, and Mtima Solwazi of the Oral Tradition ROOTS Foundation, represented T&T at the 2016 Edinburgh Arts Festival. The opportunity was part of a program by the Division of Culture in association with international organizations ACPCultures+, World Cultures Connect and Visiting Arts.

The initiative, which began in October 2015, featured workshops, webinars and a year-long mentoring program for 18 to 20 Arts organizations in T&T, following which the three practitioners were chosen to attend the Festival. While there, they were given the opportunity to network with participants from the African continent and the Pacific region, as well as Scottish artists and organizations.
Briggs said the aim of the initiative was to create local and international networks in an effort to bring about collaborations between artists. The highlight was the international producers breakfast meetings, where the participants met with international producers to promote themselves, as the producers were also scouting for people for their different companies and programs. “We also had the opportunity to meet the directors of the Edinburgh Arts Festival and the Holland International Arts Festival, who shared the histories of the festivals and the challenges they face.”
She said she was amazed by the grandness of the Festival itself, as there are approximately 2,000 venues with shows running day and night for three weeks. Briggs said she was especially intrigued by the ways space is created for performances at the Festival and she is contemplating collaborating with international arts organizations to create spaces here in Trinidad, as this is a general problem for arts disciplines.
“Funding will always be the issue but over there, most of their theatre performances were in spaces that were churches before. They value their buildings, so they don’t break them down. If it’s not being used for what it was before, they transform it. The question is, how do we get that way of thinking to those in authority, that we need to value the spaces we have and start working with what we have to meet the needs of the people here.” Briggs said the initiative also taught her there is a need to promote the work of Arts-in-Action to the public, as well as documenting the work that is taking place.
Solwazi said he left the experience with the knowledge that he needed to rebrand his organization, which he did in February this year, and he went to Edinburgh not as himself, but representing ROOTS Foundation and its main event, the Cascadoo CNVI (Caribbean New Voices International) Festival of Spoken Word, which uses Spoken Word as a catalyst for social change. He said Cascadoo had been so vibrant and dynamic since its launch in 2013 that people did not realize that ROOTS was hosting the event, and the program taught him to change that. Solwazi also said he realized that the Foundation needs to expand its content and so has added dancers and drumming to its performances.
Next year, 2017, Cascadoo will be celebrating its fifth anniversary and hosting a conference called “The South-North Griot Summit 2.0.” Solwazi said he plans to invite the Directors of the Edinburgh and Holland International Arts Festivals to attend, as well as to recreate aspects of the Fringe Festival during the event. He also said the networking aspect of the initiative has begun to pay off for him, because he was approached by producers in Scotland and India who want to work with him.
The Midnight Robber, Damien Whiskey, said his main lesson from the initiative was that traditional mas in T&T needs to move away from being a cottage industry to becoming sustainable, as it is not currently possible to earn a living from being a full-time Mas character. During networking sessions, he learned that international producers would be most interested in a full stage production that would occupy 40 minutes to an hour long show, and he has brought this idea back to traditional mas characters in T&T. Whiskey said he was also asked to be an artist-in-residence by a few universities, as a direct result of people seeing his performance in Edinburgh. He said he was able to expand on the origins of the Midnight Robber from its roots in Africa while there, and is also working on a production with the other traditional mas characters where they would each tell a story around a theme. Whiskey also said he realized the language has to change if T&T traditional mas characters want to market themselves outside the Caribbean, as other countries, e.g. Italy and Scotland, have their own traditional characters. “Now I could bring knowledge like that back to my community and tell them this is the way the world see us, not the way we see it and not who we say we are, and we have to invent terms and language to express who we are to the world, and we also have an opportunity to create or recreate ourselves, in the sense that you don’t have to be stuck in tradition. We have to take in front and grow the business outside of Carnival.”
All three participants said their particular performance art forms would be able to travel to Edinburgh and other international Arts Festivals, as there is space and a need for Caribbean representation.