By:
Patricia Thangaraj
AS Barbados gets ready to host CARIFESTA 13 in 2017 to the tune of $6 million, which includes maintenance costs of cultural buildings, one of the areas of concern going forward is how these buildings are going to be properly maintained, so that they do not fall into a state of disrepair again.
Speaking at a press conference recently at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre (LESC), Minister of Culture, Sports and Youth, Stephen Lashley, agreed that many of these buildings have deteriorated since they were last updated in 1981 for this same event.
“I do agree with you that certainly we have to do some work in terms of maintaining our facilities and that is why we are at the stage where certainly the Queen’s Park building, the Daphne Joseph Hackett Theatre are basically in a state of disrepair and that is why we had to look at launching a huge project to bring it back to a state of utility. This is why when these buildings are refurbished, there would be a maintenance clause in place,” he said.
“The Empire is another aspect as you have mentioned. We have also taken the step of allocating that to a private entity to start the work. But I agree that certainly going forward we have to find a more sustained way in which to manage our facilities. The economy behind of it is that certainly as we propel the importance of the cultural industries, we are going to have to utilise more of our facilities in a more enduring way and I think that generally speaking we have to put in place a mechanism.”
Lashley continued, “Certainly when we bring the Queen’s Park building back up, I can assure you that built into that model is going to be a very robust maintenance programme. I believe that certainly with the Empire, the same thing would obtain. We can’t afford to not build in the whole question of maintenance and therefore certainly from the prospective of those buildings that the Government – through the Ministry of Culture – have responsibility for, there would be a proper maintenance programme built into it.”
In addition, there was no Cultural Industries Development Authority or any other legislation in place in 1981 that would have driven the cultural industries forward, but now they have these things in place that should help, he said.
“Now we have very important incentives that are there in the Cultural Industries that are supposed to assist us in this regard and I also want to make the point that when we put that statute into law, we would have had the foresight of building in incentives to also encourage the private sector to invest in the refurbishment of cultural buildings and I think that once appropriately used would help a lot ... in maintaining those buildings.”
These incentives would provide tax breaks to those private sector organisations that are willing to provide financial assistance in refurbishing these buildings, said Lashley.
“So the incentives are there and therefore theatres, places of art and creativity, once they are developed by the private sector, they can readily go ahead and refurbish those buildings and claim the tax breaks that are there in the Cultural Industries Development Act.”
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