More consultations planned to finalise national cultural policy
Following the outcome of last week’s National Cultural Policy consultations, the Department of Culture will be hosting another series of consultations that will target specific sectors in the Creative Industries, according to Cultural Policy Advisor Ruel Johnson.
In an interview, Johnson said last week’s three-day consultation, which targeted government agencies, the private sector and nongovernmental stakeholder organisations, was “very successful.”
He noted that the first phase of consultations was done in 2015 and it informed the first draft of the national cultural policy, which was completed by 2017. The framework has been available online since. Johnson said now that the second phase of consultations is over, the Department will embark on a third, which will commence next month.
Before the third phase begins, however, Johnson said, Ministerial staff will have to be trained. A date for the commencement of phase three was not revealed. However, Johnson said, the next series of consultations will target specific stakeholders, such as musicians and performing artists, among numerous others. Following the end of the consultations, Johnson said, “the significantly improved document” will be handed over to the department by the end of this year.
In relation to the recent consultation, Johnson disclosed that stakeholders made some significant suggestions which will be included in the document. Some suggestions that were made, he said, are already included in the document.
The second phase of consultations, which was a collaboration between the Government of Guyana and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), began last Tuesday and concluded last Thursday at the Tower Hotel. The consultations were led by the Director of Culture (ag) Tamika Boatswain and Johnson.
Lead facilitator of the consultations was Jamaican Sydney Bartley, an expert on cultural policy. Bartley was accompanied by Yuri Peshkov, Programme Specialist for Culture in the UNESCO Kingston Cluster Office.
During the launching of the consultation last week, Social Cohesion Minister George Norton said that the process was delayed due to unforeseeable circumstances, such as budgetary constraints and the issue of the no-confidence motion that was passed against the government.
At the start of the workshop, (Department of Public Information photo)
the draft framework policy was presented to the stakeholders by Johnson, who said that there are three primary processes that will be involved in making it a working policy. These are: policy formulation, which consists of ensuring that the text of the
policy is informed by subprocesses that includes stakeholder and general citizen involvement; expert technical input and senior policymaker imprimatur and mapping, which includes a detailed assessment of the environment in