Faculty will add significant value to Barbados, says PM

THE University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus has been lauded for launching its newest faculty – the Faculty of Culture, Creative and Performing Arts.

The accolade comes from Barbados’ Prime Minister, Mia Amor Mottley. Speaking during the virtual launch last Saturday, she stated it “will add significant value to our nation”.

She further said it “will allow us to be able to embrace aspects of our culture that have been uncomfortable for many of our people to accept, to begin to contextualise why we are how we are, to be able to deal with aspects of how we organise ourselves from our families to our communities to our nation and if we are true about building a nation, then we must understand how we must raise a people and in raising a people, it matters what the values are. It matters how we relate to each other; it matters how we talk”.

“And I keep going back to these things because fundamentally, Barbadians first found expression in their accent, in their dialect and even though it was not accepted in certain company or certain parts of the world, it was who we are and it is what we held on to, to keep that identity flourishing.”

The Prime Minister stated, “It is time these things be the subject of serious academic study.”

She shared that she looks forward “to participating with The University of the West Indies at Cave Hill in also ensuring that the research that is done here and the courses that are taught here are immediately related to what we are doing in our primary schools, our secondary schools, in what we are doing in our broader society through non-formal education. Because I have always known this, the mission of our generation, the children of Independence, is to emancipate ourselves from mental slavery”. (MG)