A two-day conference is currently underway to examine the impact of the environment on the arts and what input could be garnered from the art world to inform environmental policies.
The 2010 Guyana Confer-ence: The Arts and the Environment is part of a wider three-year study being run by the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Warwick in the UK and was organised by Professor David Dabydeen and Research Fellow Dr Michael Niblett.
Stabroek News yesterday caught up with Dr Niblett during a break in the all-day programme and learnt that the aim was twofold.
“One [aim] is the ways in which the environment impacts upon writers and artists, how it affects the aesthetics, form and content of their work,” he said. “… And the second aim is linked to the ways in which artists and writers might help to cultivate an environmental consciousness and so help foster a sense of environmentalism.”
The idea, he said, was to bring together artists and writers with people who are directly involved in environmental issues such as politicians and activists and to observe what happens and if those from the art world could “provoke new ways of looking at things.”
Niblett added that they were particularly interested in Guyana given Dabydeen’s linkage with the country and the explicit environmental themes that permeate the writings of Guyanese writers and artists. The government’s Low Carbon Development Strategy, he said, was also factored into the choice of Guyana.
“We wanted to focus on Guyana and in the wider project we’re doing academic research into the ways in which writers register these environmental concerns in their work and in all this, kind of address that more practical side of it; how writers and artists might contribute to environmentalism,” he stated.
The researcher said that another conference will be held in the UK either next year or early 2012 and they hope to take Guyana-based writers, artists and activists to that event.
He added that the Guyana Conference comes at the halfway point of the three-year research which ends in May 2012. It is being funded by a UK charitable organisation.
Yesterday’s event was opened by Minister of Amerindian Affairs Pauline Sukhai who presented a general overview of the environmental issues being debated locally. Other presenters on the programme included Major General (retd) Joe Singh and activist Janette Bulkan.
The event, which ends this evening at the Cara Lodge in Georgetown, has also attracted prize-winning authors such as Mark Mc Watt, Oonya Kempadoo, Pauline Melville and Ruel Johnson, and environmentalists such as Dr David Singh, Dr Raquel Thomas, Vanda Radzik, and Annette Arjoon-Martins.
