birdsong’s 43-year struggle for security of tenure is scheduled to reach a head at any time now when the High Court order in respect of Civil Complaint No. CVC2015-01075 will be executed. The court order empowers our landlord to evict the organization and demolish the structures on the site – thereby effectively disrupting the operations of our very successful community-based music education programme which has so far provided the opportunities for more than 1,000 young people to access formal music education over the last 12 years.
As part of our continuing programme of documenting this occasion, birdsong extends an invitation to all community and non-government organizations, trade unions, steelbands, musicians, artistes and parents and guardians, to join us in solidarity at birdsong Operation Code Red, a town meeting to be held at our panyard at the corner of St. Vincent & Connell Streets in Tunapuna at 7.00 pm on Monday August 29, 2016. The major objective of Operation Code Red will be to inform the national community of the implications of the execution of the High Court order for the eviction of birdsong from the premises that we have occupied for the last 28 years.
The execution of this court order will climax more than 30 years of requests, pleadings, meetings, third party interventions and all other forms of civil communication aimed at resolving the issue of a secure home base for the organization’s activities. Over this 30 year period, we have engaged every Minister of Culture and every parliamentary representative for Tunapuna. The imminent descent of bulldozers and armed agents of the state on our premises will be the only tangible outcome of our well documented efforts to convince successive political administrations of the benefits of supporting a constructive, self-reliant community service delivery model at the front end as opposed to spending billions on the police, the army, the prisons and the court systems at the back end.
We seek no handouts. Self-sufficiency is at the core of our value system and our resource mobilization efforts involve limited recourse to state agencies. Our business activities finance our core activities and our special projects have received support from a host of local and international agencies including the UNDP, the IDB, the JB Fernandes Trust managed by the Rockefeller Foundation and United Way. As part of our engagement with these agencies, our programmes routinely come under independent professional scrutiny and we regularly receive strong endorsements for accountability, relevance and the creativity of our approach to empowering the next generation of Trinidad & Tobago’s musicians.
The birdsong Pan Theatre is a major cultural landmark in the Tunapuna area with a year round programme of activities including:
- An August vacation music camp which has provided more than 1,200 young people with exposure to an integrated curriculum of music theory, practical skills, history of the steel pan and life skills.
- Year round music theory classes which have so far provided the opportunity to more than 300 youths to obtain certification from the Royal School of Music. A cadre of the country’s most experienced professional musicians comprise the teaching faculty for this programme.
- Practice facilities for our steel orchestra which has performed at every National Panorama competition since 1974 and toured the Caribbean, Venezuela and the United Kingdom.
- Our landscaping, construction services and agricultural enterprises which employ more than 60 persons on a full time basis.
- The birdsong international programme through which about 50 music students from universities in North America and Europe participate in the panorama competition while earning credits towards completion of their respective degrees and diplomas.
Our premises are regularly made available to the community for christenings, weddings, funerals, community functions and yes................party political events. The birdsong model of community service delivery has been documented, analyzed and acclaimed by several international consultants and academic institutions.
Operation Code Red will document for the benefit of current and future generations the abject failure of the existing policy framework to support the development of systems to explore and realize the full potential of our nation’s musical possibilities and the ambivalence and the traditional indifference that continue to characterize the attitudes of our political elites to self-sufficient approaches to our nation’s cultural development. We urge you to participate in this chapter of history.
Join us at 7.00 pm on Monday August 22, 2016 at the corner of St. Vincent and Connell Streets in Tunapuna.
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