EHS: Government urged to pay more attention to cultural activities in budget

A short performance of 30 minutes by the FANATIK band brought down the curtains on the first ever workshop on live sound engineering at the auditorium of the Dominica State College at its main campus at stock farm on Friday 28^th March.

Certificates of completion were handed to the 36 participants by Mr Merril Matthew of the department of continuing education at the college who reminded the recipients that in the 21^st century the only constant was continuous cycle of unlearning, learning and re-learning. He was thus gratified to see that the group of trainees included persons who had been in the field for many years as well as those who were just starting out.

President of the Association for Music Professionals, Mc Carthy MARIE,  addressed the graduands and other members of the audience. He pointed out that the National Export Council Secretariat had carried out a survey in 2012 which indicated that some 1000 persons or about 3% of the labour force were employed, part-time or full time in the creative industries which included music, video, radio and TV, advertising, art and craft, printing and publishing. A similar study undertaken by a team of consultants, of which he was a member, to measure the contribution of copyright based industries to employment and GDP in the OECS also found that in Dominica the copyright sector contributed 3.7% of employment and 3% of GDP in 2010.  This study found that music was the most important industry in the copyright sector in Dominica. All of this was achieved without much specific support from Government. He appealed to the members of the audience from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Employment, Trade and Diaspora Affairs to give higher priority to cultural activities in future budgeting exercises. Speaking directly to the females among the college students who were invited to the closing ceremony and performance he noted that this first seminar was heavily dominated by males with only one female participant. He drew their attention to the fact that Elton John’s first wife was the chief engineer at the world famous AIR Studios in Montserrat and he expressed the hope that some of the female students would get involved in the field and would be participants at future training events.

A vote of thanks was given by Ms Antoinette MORA, the sole female participant in which she made special mention of the role of the Dominica Coalition of Service industries particularly the executive Director and Ms Stephanie Astaphan. She thanked Mr Nigel Brizan, the tutor, for making a complex subject matter easily understandable to all participants even those who were hearing some of the terminology for the first time.

Financing for the training was provided by the Government of the United Kingdom through the CART fund which is managed by the Caribbean Development bank on behalf of the Department for International Development (DFID).

At the end of the workshop a mini concert was held to demonstrate the techniques of live sound engineering as learnt by the participants.

Below is a video of Fanatik performing during that demonstration.

See more posts on the Entertainment Hot Spot page.