Two statements appeared in the media recently, one from Richard Stoute who has been running his teen talent show in Barbados for over thirty years, and another from the Government rep. Curtis Gibbons who is the national coordinator of the community independence celebrations. These two statements are an excellent example of the competitive conflict and self interest that reflects the true policy of the proposed Festival Events Bureau government is setting up.

Recently Richard Stoute made a statement that after thirty one years of having his Teen Talent contest he is still unable to acquire major corporate sponsorship and must go “cap in hand” attempting to do so and being turned down regardless of his tactics.
The Government also made a seperate statement stating that they are not happy with the level of sponsorship that they have been getting for the independence celebrations and they are appealing to corporate Barbados to inject more money into their event.

So here we have it where Government - the body that is supposed to be the facilitating cultural entrepreneurs like Richard Stoute by not only injecting funding into his show but by encouraging corporate Barbados to support Richard - is instead putting itself against Richard and “begging” for the same limited funds that should be going to him.

One of the major stated objectives of the Festival Events is to pursue and secure corporate sponsorship.
This obvious and blatant conflict is one of the issues that I raised when UAB and BATMAN met with the Prime Minister discussing the flawed policies of this Bureau back on 12th July 2006. That was one of the reasons I was removed from the committee which is now being convened to explore this same FEB.

How can you claim to be developing an industry when you are coming into the same industry and competing against the participants? The teen talent scenario is a good example. Government needs to get behind Richard and support his teen talent with financial grants and concessions not put itself in a position where it can be deemed that it is the Government Versus Richard Stoute!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 7:38 am and is filed under Artists, FEB, NCF . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.