Thru Novel Lenses! New Vision New Perspectives New Ideas New Directions For the New World! Futuring Sustainable Development in the Post Pandemic Planet From Pre School to Policy Making
Author Kris Rampersad authographs LiTTscapes at Littribute to the Mainland, Guyana.
PORT OF SPAIN, Trinidad -- A special tour of Port of Spain through the eyes of award winning fictional writers and famous characters fiction will be offered to citizens and visitor to Trinidad and Tobago on Saturday April 27, 2013.
Author of the critically acclaimed LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago, Dr Kris Rampersad said the LiTTour will celebrate Port of Spain as a creative city like no other. It takes place on Saturday April 27, 2013 from 8 am by prebookings only, leaving from the South Quay compounds of the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC).
“This LiTTour is a special collaboration with PTSC’s Know Your Country Tours to expose the capital city as seen through the eyes of authors in its raw, real and pulsating states as one of the most creative cities in the world, of Trinidad and Tobago,” said Rampersad.
“We hope to renew and heighten appreciation of our capital and understanding of the literary and creative imaginations that have been representing and reflecting us, and our city: our landscapes and our lifestyles; our institutions, our cultural life, our politics, our architecture. We hope such appreciation can defray violent and negative practices that misrepresent who we are as a people and encourage young people into creative activity and away from lives in crime.”
The LiTTour will be free to persons who between now and April 25, 2013, purchase, a copy ofLiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago.
LiTTscapes describes through descriptions and photographs how some 60 writers in more than 100 works have portrayed Trinidad and Tobago in literature from as early as 1595 to present day. It is designed by Sonja Wong. Head of the Guyana Prize for Literature, Professor Al Creighton described LiTTscapes as a work of art; a documentary, a travelogue, a critical work with visual and literary power. It takes us on a tour of the country, giving some exposure to almost every aspect of life, at the same time exploring the literature to indicate how the writers treat the subjects, what they or their fictional characters say, and how they are used in the plots. Photographs are accompanied by the descriptions and literary excerpts of the capital city, other towns, streets, urban communities, villages, historic buildings and places, vegetation, animals, institutions, culture and landscape. There is considerable visual beauty, what Derek Walcott calls “visual surprise”.”
In conjunction with LiTTscapes and LiTTours, launched last August, Rampersad has also introduced LiTTributes – events in tribute to Caribbean cultures and creativity which have to date been staged in Guyana, Antigua and Trinidad and Tobago and soon in the UK and USA. They are meant to promote literacy, creativity and interactive appreciation of the global multicultural milieu Trinidad and Tobago.
Customade LiTTributes and LiTTours based on district, theme or body of literature are available on request.
A special tour of Port of Spain through the eyes of award winning fictional writers and famous characters fiction will be offered to citizens and visitor to Trinidad and Tobago on Saturday April 27, 2013. Booking Form LiTTour April 27 2013. Deadline April 25: 2013
The LiTTour is an offspring of the critically acclaimed LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago by Dr Kris Rampersad.
It will celebrate Port of Spain as a creative city like no other. It takes place on Saturday April 27, 2013 from 8 am by prebookings only, leaving from the South Quay compounds of the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC).
This LiTTour is a special collaboration with PTSC’s Know Your Country Tours to expose the capital city as seen through the eyes of authors in its raw, real and pulsating states as one of the most creative cities in the world, of Trinidad and Tobago.
We hope to renew and heighten appreciation of our capital and understanding of the literary and creative imaginations that have been representing and reflecting us, and our city: our landscapes and our lifestyles; our institutions, our cultural life, our politics, our architecture. We hope such appreciation can defray violent and negative practices that misrepresent who we are as a people and encourage young people into creative activity and away from lives in crime.
The LiTTour will be free to persons who between now and April 25, 2013, purchase, a copy of LiTTscapes – Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago. For details contact 1-868-377-0326; email lolleaves@gmail.com and visit:www.kris-rampersad.blogspot.com.
LiTTscapes describes through descriptions and photographs how some 60 writers in more than 100 works have portrayed Trinidad and Tobago in literature from as early as 1595 to present day. It is designed by Sonja Wong. Head of the Guyana Prize for Literature, Professor Al Creighton described LiTTscapes as a work of art; a documentary, a travelogue, a critical work with visual and literary power. It takes us on a tour of the country, giving some exposure to almost every aspect of life, at the same time exploring the literature to indicate how the writers treat the subjects, what they or their fictional characters say, and how they are used in the plots. Photographs are accompanied by the descriptions and literary excerpts of the capital city, other towns, streets, urban communities, villages, historic buildings and places, vegetation, animals, institutions, culture and landscape. There is considerable visual beauty, what Derek Walcott calls “visual surprise”.
In conjunction with LiTTscapes and LiTTours, launched last August, we has also introduced LiTTributes – events in tribute to Caribbean cultures and creativity which have to date been staged in Guyana, Antigua and Trinidad and Tobago and soon in the UK and USA. They are meant to promote literacy, creativity and interactive appreciation of the global multicultural milieu Trinidad and Tobago.
Customade LiTTributes and LiTTours based on district, theme or body of literature are available on request.
T&T author ...on UNESCO international culture body
Author and educator, Dr Kris Rampersad has been invited to serve on the consultative body of the international InterGovernmental Committee on safeguarding intangible cultural heritage of the United Nations Educational, Science and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).
She is one of six international experts who will serve on the consultative committee in their individual professional capacity, following the decision which was taken at last December’s meeting of the InterGovernmental Committee in Paris, France.
At its first meeting held in Paris this week, Rampersad was also elected by peers to serve as Vice-Chair of the organ.
In this role, she will participate in scrutinising applications to UNESCO’s Register of Best Safeguarding Practices, the Urgent Safeguarding List and requests for international assistance in relation to Intangible Cultural Heritage.
Dr Rampersad — an independent media, cultural and literary consultant and facilitator — is a UNESCO-trained expert towards helping communities strengthen mechanisms to safeguard their cultural heritage. She has been conducting capacity building exercises in this regard across the Caribbean, including in countries as Belize, Jamaica, Guyana, St Kitts & Nevis, Trinidad and Tobago and Grenada. She has also prepared and trained Caribbean youths, policymakers, decision makers and cultural communities in accessing the provisions of the Conventions towards strengthening mechanism for cultural survival and endurance. She further participated in the intergovernmental meeting on intangible cultural heritage in Bali, Indonesia in December, 2011.
Rampersad has been examining and critiquing national and international policy instruments, including UNESCO mechanisms, and devising mechanisms and recommendations for culture-centred development for more than a decade. She has also been engaged by various international and regional agencies to present her perspective and coordinate multisectoral examination of development issues, bringing together policy and decision-makers, academics, private sector, media and civil society on a range of fields including science, technology, communications, agriculture, gender among others.
A journalist, and newspaper editor, her research and recommendations are represented in UNESCO publications as well as the Commonwealth Foundation’s Putting Culture First Report; the culture reports of the ACP-EU (Africa, Pacific, Caribbean-European Union), and the International Who’s Who in Culture Policy Research among others.
She is the author of the highly acclaimed LiTTscapes — Landscapes of Fiction from Trinidad and Tobago; Through the Political Glass Ceiling, and Finding a Place along with numerous print and new media journals and fora on culture, gender, literature, media and development.
Rampersad is the Chair of the Trinidad and Tobago National Commission for UNESCO.
https://sites.google.com/site/krisrampersadglobal;
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/woman-magazine/TT--202799611.html;
https://sites.google.com/site/krisrampersadglobal
Seeing connections in our Caribbean Sea
Reflections on Epic Aesthetics of the Archipelago
The AuTThor: Dr Kris Rampersad
At LiTTribute to the Antilles @ Museum of Antigua and BarbudaSt John’s, Antigua, March 23, 2013
The Caribbean has never been taught to appreciate the value of the space contained by the Caribbean Sea from which it draws its name, identity, and sustenance.
We have been programmed to conceive of ourselves as islands. To see ourselves in our smallness, rather than in the bigger picture of who we are and how we fit into the scheme of things and the broad mechanics of this space we occupy in the universe.
We are 22 islands, we are told, and then our knowledge providers give us other diminutive denominations of identity: Greater and Lesser Antilles; Windward and Leeward Islands; big and small islands of the Caribbean: OECS, CARICOM, ACS; and then the linguistic divisions - English, French, Spanish, Dutch speaking; our islands named and still yet the narrow national markers of identity: Trini Doubles, Jamaican Jerk, Bajan Flying Fish.
We get lost in the minute divisions. Rarely do we hear the bigger picture: a presence in a Caribbean Sea that contains us - almost three million square kilometres of earth; that comprises not
For more on this article or further information email lolleaves@gmail.com
CCBP: Caribbean Capacity Building Workshop in preparation for the sites nomination dossiers to the World Heritage List. Kingston, Jamaica, 5-15 June, 2012
Within the framework of the celebrations for the 40th Anniversary of the 1972 UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage , took place from 5 to 15 June 2012 in Kingston, Jamaica, the Caribbean Capacity Building Workshop to prepare the nomination dossiers for the INESCO World Heritage List. The workshop was organized by the UNESCO Kingston Office with funding from the government of Japan and the cooperation of the UNESCO Regional Office for Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean in Havana and the National Jamaican Commission for UNESCO.
The course was addressed to professionals working in the field of cultural and natural heritage, staff in national institutions and specialists sent by National Commissions for UNESCO in each country and was focused in the development of capacities for the nomination of sites to the tentative lists of World Heritage on the Eastern Caribbean countries as a way to expand the number of sites representing Caribbean heritage in the world list and to balance its geographical location.
The workshop aimed at providing support to the conservation of world heritage and to expand the knowledge about places of memory in the Caribbean taking into account their own specific characteristics and their high potential to promote social participation and improve sustainable development of the communities in small island states. Another objective was to strengthen the participants capacities for the effective implementation of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention and increase the participation of Caribbean countries in the preparation and submission of the nomination dossiers to the UNESCO World Heritage Centre , thus increasing in number and quality the nominations to world cultural and natural heritage and highlighting the perspective of the Places of Memory existing in the Caribbean.
The workshop used the modules of the Caribbean Capacity Building Programme for the World Cultural and Natural Heritage in the Caribbean 2004-2014 (CCBP), to facilitate the participants’ work in the nomination of the sites in their respective countries. The CCBP consists of six training modules that deal with the application of the 1972 Convention, the management of tourism, risk prevention, management of cultural landscapes, management of historic centres and management of natural heritage.
Outstanding international experts, specialists from the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and from the UNESCO Offices in Havana and Kingston taught the workshop, which was facilitated by consultants Arch. Patricia Green of Jamaica and Dr. Arch. Isabel Rigol of Cuba. Several other highly prestigious professors were invited to lecture, outstanding among them for their contribution and the special relationship established with participants, Dr. Alissandra Cummins, President of the UNESCO Executive Council and one of the most active promoters of the inscription in 2011 of y Historic Bridgetown and its Garrison, in Barbados, in the World Heritage List. Dr Cummins, who is also head of the National Commission for UNESCO in Barbados, exchanged experiences and shared important details with regards to the nomination process. After a brief stay in the country, Mrs. Cummins returned to her country to welcome UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, in her official visit to Barbados, where she visited the site most recently inscribed in the World heritage List, the twenty-first in the Caribbean.
Sixteen places of memory were studied in the workshop, new proposals were considered to be included in the national tentative lists for their submission by the countries to their inscription in the World Heritage List.
https://sites.google.com/site/krisrampersadglobal
http://www.unesco.lacult.org/proyectos/showitem.php?lg=2&id=137&paginasweb=29&idtitulo=1589
Dear Lizzie, Perhaps you might want to dispute the news that Britain has had only one Iron Lady, as the great lady herself, is laid to uneasy rest as I put the finishing touches on and prepare to write the closing lines of this correspondence ....
So we've had the rounds of consultations on Constitutional Reform? Are we any wiser? Do we have a sense of direction that will drive transformation of the governance of T&T? Do we have a vision for a better framework of governance: made of the people of T&; for the people of T&T; and by the people of T&T? Or are we merely repackaging old casked mercantilist rum in new bottles as we try to forcefit ourselves in one of two already tottering models of governance - the British Westminster system and the US Presidential model. Time to rethink our approach for what works best for us. To begin this probe, let's flash back to an article written in the lead up to the 2010 elections: Have any of these found resolution in the recent rounds of constitutional reform talks; or have they been just that: talk? More in the introduction to Through the Political Glass Ceiling
available on Amazon Kindle and local bookshops:
Constitutional Crisis of Leadership Various analyses tell us that the leadership blunders of the past few decades point to the Trinidad and Tobago's Constitution as the culprit, and there is an indisputable need for constitution reform, given evident flaws in T&T Constitutions past and present.
Both the 1961 (Independence) Constitution and the 1976 (Republic) Constitution were clearly already obsolete from their inception, with their unworkable British import of the first-past-the-post/winner-take-all model and evident failure, as they disenfranchise large numbers of voters, as occurred in the 1981, 2001, 2002 and 2007 general elections.
The alternative, proportional representation, which offers each party numbers of seats in Parliament, according to the proportion of votes they command, has received some attention, but, like first-past-the-post, it upholds a party-based system that gives politicians divine status, and places them at the centre of decision-making, which we have seen, with demands for a bottoms-up approach, itself cannot hold.
The Wooding (1971) and Hyatali (1974) Commissions, set up to explore constitutional reform, proposed another, a mixed system drawing from first-past-the-post and proportional representative models. This has been rejected by the PNM’s Williams and Manning, though all—PNM and the commissions—premised their arguments on our diversity which they defined largely as ethnic diversity.
Manning put forward, in 2006, a “working document” on constitutional reform, drawn up primarily by a one-man commission (former President Ellis Clarke), and after-the-fact staged some public “consultations”—an approach interpreted as paying lip service to public opinion.
Executive president?
His draft provided for an executive president, as in the USA, which would give even more executive powers to an already maximum leader of the first-past-the-post system, without correcting (but rather further emasculating) those instruments and institutions that provide checks and balances on such “Massa” power.
These include the judiciary and the legislature, and others as the Ombudsman, the Director of Public Prosecution, the Commissioner of Police, the magistracy, Commissions for Integrity, Judicial and Legal Services, Police Service, Public Service, Teaching Service. etc.
It also proposes to restrict the principle of freedom of expression (the media) by altering the Bill of Rights.
Another constitution, drafted by the self-assigned 2006 Fairness Committee of four, leaned on a further amalgamation—of the Manning model (though produced before Manning’s) supporting an executive president, along with a mixed system of proportional representation and first-past-the-post, as recommended by the Wooding and Hyatali Commissions.
One challenge after the other to the constitution has surfaced, since the NAR, to show that the constitution is not just dog-eared, but coming apart at the seams and irrelevant in a rapidly-changing world:
1. The PNM’s challenge of Winston “Gypsy” Peters’ dual citizenship;
2. The 2002 18-18 deadlocked elections which were not catered for in the constitution;
3. Other challenges, mainly related to cockfighting, by Panday and Robinson—appointments through the Senate of people who had been defeated in the polls;
4. The chicken-and-egg crisis precipitated by the Standing Order for electing a Speaker before convening the House, when neither party wanted to propose a Speaker.
The constitution of Trinidad and Tobago, as it is, has outlived its usefulness.
To justify his quest for an executive president/US-styled governance system, (Then) PNM leader Patrick Manning has sought to justify his high-handed approach to decision-making with arguments that the extremely diverse nature of the society and their many competing interests made it difficult to govern, and needed “strong” leadership. But at the risk of sounding like a prophetess, the diversity of T&T is, indeed, its primary character, and anyone who cannot manage our diversity is doomed to failure! Anyone who wants to govern effectively must unite the diversity, rather than seek ever more exclusive power to overrule it; (the consequences of ignoring the public over an extended period have been graphically illustrated by the events of recent weeks).
The constitution—and the Westminster-styled parliamentary system it establishes cannot accommodate that diversity.
The PNM—undeniably the most experienced party in T&T—argue that neither could proportional representation.
Both, it seems, are partly in the right; but wholly wrong.
Leadership crisis—single party or coalition
The search for the ideal model has been around the debate of whether the single party or coalition government is the better model. Both have been tried and tested and found wanting. As analyst Dr Bishnu Ragoonath observed, the three occasions when our governments prematurely collapsed have been as single-party governments—Panday’s in 2001 and Manning’s in 1995, and 2010. Majority rule by a maximum leader, with powers equivalent to the divine right of kings, in a single party is losing sway on a population becoming more astute and unwilling to continue as blind, unquestioning, sheep-like followers. Governance by any one majority ethnic group has become unsavoury to growing and more vociferous elements, demanding recognition of our cultural and other diversity, denied in Williams “No Mother India, no Mother Africa” maxim which seemed not to grasp the complexity of the identity issue. Nor have coalitions worked either; not two examples, the alliance governments of 1986 and 1991—both of which evolved out of forces opposing the PNM and including Panday’s UNC, Robinson’s Democratic Action Congress, Karl Hudson-Phillips’ Organisation for National Reconstruction, Lloyd Best’s Tapia and various others. They failed because... They failed, not because the structure of the coalitions was tested, nor because of challenges of managing our complex diversity—they never got a chance. They failed because—as with the maximum leader mode of single-party politics—managing the diverse egos of a man-rat-driven political culture, continuously tested the constitution and the governance model, promoting the eminence of constitutional lawyers and legal Messiahs. They failed because of unenlightened or misguided leadership that failed to respect the needs and wishes of its people.
The Triumph of Gollum in the Land of Shut Up Suicide of the
Fellowship of Partnerships Book 11. A Sequel Futuring the Agenda Forward https://goo.gl/HU3rp3
Celebrating Jamettry The Sacred and the Sacriligious
