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Drama school lacks vital resources – lecturer
The National School of Theatre Arts and Drama graduated its inaugural batch on Monday last, and one of the lecturers, Dr. Al Creighton, has highlighted that the programmes offered at the school are severely affected as the entity lacks vital resources – chief among which is trained lecturers.
Students of the National School of Theatre Arts and Drama
performing an extract from the play, “Ramilla”.
The school of drama was established under the ambit of the Ministry of Culture Youth and Sport in 2012 and was officially launched on January 29, 2013. Classes began at the National Cultural Centre on February 11 with an initial enrollment of 26 students reading for the Diploma in Theatre Arts and Drama.
The school offers a two-year programme with certification at two levels – the Diploma in Theatre Arts; and at the higher level – the Diploma in Theatre Arts and Drama.
This is the first time that a formal academic institution has been established locally to train and certify persons at the tertiary level in theatre arts and drama.
Dr. Creighton in his report during the graduation ceremony said that of the 26 students, only 12 earned passing grades.
“The School started with an initial enrollment of 26 students but only 12 successfully completed the programme. This represents a high rate of failure and a high dropout rate as 14 – or more than 50 percent -failed the courses, did not earn enough credits to graduate, dropped out in the middle of the Semester or officially withdrew from the programme.”
Creighton however pointed out that despite these odds, several of the students have been recruited as “mentors” in the public school system.
“The students are equipped to assist the Ministry of Education in the secondary schools. These schools need trained persons to teach the CXC Theatre Arts and the School of Drama is poised to contribute to the register of persons who can teach this subject.”
He also spoke to one of the biggest problems facing the school; the unavailability of properly trained persons to serve as lecturers on the programme.
“Persons with formal training at the university level or a sufficiently high tertiary level are fairly rare within Guyana. This poses a problem for the school, which has to make use of experienced practitioners such as tutors and demonstrators to assist the lecturers in running the courses.”
He added, “In the end, the school delivered, but the situation and the conditions were far less than ideal and it took a tremendous serving of commitment and goodwill on the part of those who saw it through to this final stage.
Frankly, it has to be said that several crucial things and many vital resources that were necessary for the school and its programmes were not in place despite the fact that they were prerequisites. It is therefore, strongly recommended that these be corrected forthwith.”
Supporting Creighton’s call for the development of the School was Dr. Hilary Brown, Programme Manager for Culture, Youth and Development at CARICOM.
Brown expressed that the School itself is evidence at the national level, that the commitments made by many CARICOM governments are becoming a reality as they have declared in their 2012 meetings that more emphasis should be placed on the development of cultural and creative industries within the country.
But while this step can be applauded, Brown stressed that more can be done.
“We now have a Regional Development Strategy for the development of the cultural industries in CARICOM member states, which was approved by the Ministers of Culture in 2012,”Brown said.
“It calls for a number of important actions including improving and expanding infrastructure within training institutions for arts, education and for commercial presentation of the arts.”
The programme manager urged those in attendance to take up the charge to establish sustainable national and regional associations of artistes to lobby the government and the private sector to support the enabling of the necessary infrastructure to ensure continued development of the arts.
She stressed that it is important for the government and the private sector to work together towards achieving this, as the creative and cultural industries were identified by the CARICOM governments as a strategic choice for reinvigorating economic growth, employment and social cohesion.
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