Fourteen years after launching Despat’s Creative Craft, Patricia Helwig continues to search for the rewards which she believes her efforts should have yielded by this time. Her skills and her drive have not, it appears, been enough to take her business to a higher level and today she has come to understand that succeeding in business in Guyana sometimes takes more than talent, ambition and hard work.
All of Patricia’s business pursuits revolve around her wide range of creative skills that range from culinary talents to fabric and clothing design. Still without business premises from which to ply her trade and display the goods and services she offers, Patricia continues to do what she does from her Prashad Nagar residence. Giving up, she says, is not an option. What she does is what she wants to do and she is sticking with it.
Prior to immersing herself in her current creative pursuits, Patricia worked as a secretary then as a teacher before pursuing a degree in sociology at the University of Guyana. Those days now appear to be behind her. She is now preoccupied with finding affordable business premises to shift her operations. This, she believes, is the accomplishment that could unlock the door to greater rewards.
Like hundreds of other Guyanese who make their living in the creative field, Patricia finds the ‘high street’ rents to be beyond her reach. Some of the smallest spaces on Regent Street, for example, are being rented for amounts that range from $150,000 to $200,000 monthly. The influx of Chinese traders, she says have forced the prices up. She is concerned that lack of opportunity to trade in the city confines the business pursuits of persons in the creative sector to cottage industries that are limited mostly to markets created by infrequent exhibitions and fairs.
Patricia manages as best she can from her quiet residential locale in Prashad Nagar, some of her ‘bread and butter’ pursuits being designing clothing for Sonia Noel’s annual Fashion Weekend, taking her creations to the annual Inter-Guianas Festival – which, this year, will be held in Guyana – and to the local August 1 Emancipation Day Celebrations. Other special events like the Mashramani celebrations also attract a measure of patronage.
Her home has also become a training ground for persons interested in learning the various creative skills at which she herself has become adept. She services a contract provided by the Ministry of Labour’s Board of Industrial Training to provide training in catering for 60 single mothers annually. It is part of a state project aimed at empowering the trainees through skills that would render them employable in the hospitality sector. The acquisition of those skills also opens up the option of self-employment. Training, she says, gives her the greatest satisfaction. She herself was trained at the Carnegie School of Home Economics and over time, she has trained several hundred persons in cake making and decorating, fabric design, bridal accessories and catering. Her Chinese cooking, she says, is popular with her trainees.
Currently serving as Secretary of the Guyana Arts and Craft Association, Patricia Helwig is a passionate advocate of more official support for the sector. Some modest support has been forthcoming from government though the sloth in activating the Small Business Act which seeks to provide funding and various other forms of support for the creative industry, among others, has become a matter of frustration to local craftspeople. Patricia believes that the industry merits official support given its potential to provide significant levels of employment while positioning the artists and craftspeople to add a significant dimension to the local tourist industry and to enhance the country’s image abroad.
Patricia’s personal life has been no less challenging than her efforts to succeed in business. At sixteen, she became a mother to her six siblings following the death of her own mother and perhaps it was at this juncture that her entrepreneurial inclinations came to the fore. Earning money meant the creation of a kitchen garden the produce from which was sold at the municipal market. At school, she also secured the patronage of teachers and friends for the various sweetmeats which she cooked at home. Those days taught her the rudiments of hard work, thrift and careful spending; elements which she has infused into her current business pursuits.
After 14 years life may no longer be as challenging for Patricia Helwig as it was for a 16-year-old girl tasked with bringing up six siblings. Still, she believes she deserves more and the self-belief and commitment which she exudes suggests that she is not stopping until she makes the mark which she envisages in the world of entrepreneurship.
