Published: March/April 2003
Theme: The Art-Jazz Connection
Cover: Prediction, oil on canvas by Ras Akyem Ramsay. Part of the National Collection.
Contributors: Carolle Bourne, Kevin Farmer, Mark Selman
BackPage Say #1
Betting on Art
By Robert Edison Sandiford
WITHIN the last four months, Prime Minister Owen Arthur has hosted “the best ever” NIFCA Gala, added his own prize to the Central Bank’s Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Awards and opened up the newly renovated Old Spirit Bond, to which the Verandah Art Gallery relocated. It would be naïve to think our minister of culture’s interest (particularly as minister of finance) has little to do with revenue. How much, for instance, is lost annually in taxes to music piracy? The global pirate music market totalled 1.9 billion units in 2001, the last year for which statistics are available from IFPI. This organization, which represents the international recording industry, estimates the value of the market to be US$4.3 billion. Barbadians surely are among these avid music consumers.
It would equally be foolish to think art only matters when it attracts the attention of ministers or corporations or other artists.
When I ask myself why art matters, the answer is simple to me, obvious. Art—be it film, literature, visual, plastic, performance, or dance, or something else entirely—gives us all that we know, all that we think we know and all that we will ever know. That’s why I rely on art, place my bet on it every time to see me through this difficult world.
Yet, a college professor of mine once said, what may be obvious to one may not be obvious to another.
This is where ArtsEtc: The Premier Cultural Guide to Barbados comes in.
ArtsEtc has been founded as a forum for discussion on Barbadian art, culture and heritage at a time when the local mainstream media often appear reflexively curious about any of these. ArtsEtc is therefore an alternative publication, offering readers critical essays, provocative fiction and poetry, sharp graphics, and more.
There’s always something going on in Barbados. This activity makes the island the perfect launch pad for such a bi-monthly, arts-and-culture newsletter.
If you’re looking for what has gone before, ArtsEtc ain’t it. The whole point is to get readers (and contributors) to explore and evaluate their art, culture and heritage—Barbadian, but also Caribbean and extra-regional—in fresh, unusual and independent ways.
ArtsEtc will be seeking to express or challenge the artistic temperament of the times. We may often do both within the same issue, the very same piece. Welcome to our first issue. We hope it was good for you, too.
Robert Edison Sandiford is a founding editor with Linda M. Deane of ArtsEtc.
