bahamianpride
05-29-07, - 08:10 PM
Information and Innovation
http://www.thenassauguardian.com/editorial/313696608821926.php
Dr Desirée Cox, Rhodes Scholar, medical doctor, historian, writer, jazz-singer,
historian and artist
www.soulimagination.org
email: info@soulimagination.org
or dr.desireecox@gmail.com
Between 2004-2007 four people myself (Dr Desiree Cox), Jewel Major, Ria Treco and Reverend Oswald Poiter did the unthinkable. We gathered base-line
information about five core areas where urban renewal task forces were based. This data had never been gathered before. We gathered information about the average educational level, average population numbers, average income, numbers of churches and businesses in these areas, published local history, interviews with local people, national studies relevant to these areas, some of which had never seen the light of day, having a life, only in the desk drawers of Permanent Secretaries and other government officials - information that had either never been gathered or analyzed or summarized in these ways, prepared them as Working Papers and released them into the public domain.
The Working Papers covered the subject of Community Profiles of Urban Areas, Sustainable Development, and Spiritual Transformation. I sent the Working
Papers to radio shows, not to promote urban renewal but to talk about the innovation of the working papers, the process of information gathering, the
process of self-education and transformation. Urban Renewal was, after all a vehicle. It had been a vehicle for the police to promote and further their
agenda of community policing. For some it had become a vehicle for personal gain. But that, is a different story. Radio show hosts invited me to come in
and talk about the information.
People came to the office in droves requesting the Working Papers. Ordinary people. Shop-keepers, parents, librarians. High-school students, college students, grand-parents. I took them round to Public servants. Bishops, church officials, contacted me for copies. Within a few days the first print run had disappeared. We requested another run of Working Papers.
When they came to collect the Working Papers so their children could know their history, so they could know about the urban areas. They would say to me 'This is exactly what we need.'
Or, 'I had no idea this was the situation in those areas.'
The Bishops and pastors confessed: 'We have branches of churches there but I didn't realize there was so much going on in the area, so much duplication... So many programs...all of them unco-ordinated...I never knew that Englerston was supposed to be the Coconut Grove - like the Miami grove of Nassau.
College lecturers thanked us for the Working Papers. They were using them as references in their classes for lectures.
How did we manage to do something that no academic institution or Christian Council had managed in over 33 years of Independence? Notice I said 'we'
because this is part of how these results were achieved.
When I came to The Bahamas as Consultant to the Urban Renewal Commission, I thought I would have a research team, but in Bahamas experienced
researchers are few and far between. Through imagination, intuition and good fortune I managed to create a small research team of non-researchers
(except Ria Treco who had had some research experience as an undergraduate).
For a short while we had the assistance of Jeannie Minus (loaned to us from the Department of Statistics, and Linda Moxey-Brown on a brief loan from
Education, but the core team, the people who did most of the work over these three (3) years of existence of the Transformation and Research Unit were
myself (head of the unit), Jewel Major, Rev Poitier, and Ria Treco.
Civil Servants have the reputation of working to the clock. We all know the refrain from the Bahamian Sting song: Who you workin' for? The Government
dem. Who give you that job? My MP. What time your work start? When I reach. What time is it now? Sting Time. So how did I find myself leading a
team where people choose to take pictures of churches in the small hours of the morning for something as elusive as a Working Paper, in a culture
with no wide-spread appreciation for research as such? The answer, is a story of Imagination, Information and Innovation. It is, I believe, one of the
many stories about local innovations which remain largely untold, unknown, unappreciated.
So, when I sat, last Saturday at a round table discussion (between a Canadian Delegation and The Bahamas) about Self-sufficiency and Problem-Solving, and listened to our people, local Bahamians laying out the range of problems in the Bahamas and the Caribbean in such complicated ways, as if there were no examples of local people finding innovative ways of being self-sufficient, in the face of no agreement, my heart sank.
Why aren't we telling these stories of imagination and innovation? Why do we seem not to have the confidence to tell our own stories in our own ways, to
cite our case-studies as it were? Why can we not see that The Mind is the next frontier? Why are we still trying to kill each other off, erase all traces of the past, instead of learning from the innovations? Why can we not see how this way of being, keeps us sitting at the table, like poor people, begging for riches we already have, but cannot yet see. Why? We'll talk about how the innovation of the Transformation and Research Unit (unofficially disbanded around February 2007), what it evolved and how it made history in the weeks to come.
In the meantime, BE PART OF THE NEW ON-LINE SOUL IMAGINATION INITIATIVE TO TELL YOUR STORIES OF THE IMAGINATION AND INNOVATIONS OF BAHAMIANS, AND PEOPLE LIVING IN THE BAHAMAS (PAST AND PRESENT). ALSO YOU ARE INVITED TO COME AND TALK TO ME ABOUT THESE ISSUES AT THE RECEPTION AND OPENING OF MY ART EXHIBITION 'DREAM-MAKER' THIS THURSDAY, MAY 31ST AT CAFE EUROPA, CHARLOTTE STREET, OFF BAY, BETWEEN 6 PM AND 9 PM. Until next week.
http://www.thenassauguardian.com/editorial/313696608821926.php
Dr Desirée Cox, Rhodes Scholar, medical doctor, historian, writer, jazz-singer,
historian and artist
www.soulimagination.org
email: info@soulimagination.org
or dr.desireecox@gmail.com
Between 2004-2007 four people myself (Dr Desiree Cox), Jewel Major, Ria Treco and Reverend Oswald Poiter did the unthinkable. We gathered base-line
information about five core areas where urban renewal task forces were based. This data had never been gathered before. We gathered information about the average educational level, average population numbers, average income, numbers of churches and businesses in these areas, published local history, interviews with local people, national studies relevant to these areas, some of which had never seen the light of day, having a life, only in the desk drawers of Permanent Secretaries and other government officials - information that had either never been gathered or analyzed or summarized in these ways, prepared them as Working Papers and released them into the public domain.
The Working Papers covered the subject of Community Profiles of Urban Areas, Sustainable Development, and Spiritual Transformation. I sent the Working
Papers to radio shows, not to promote urban renewal but to talk about the innovation of the working papers, the process of information gathering, the
process of self-education and transformation. Urban Renewal was, after all a vehicle. It had been a vehicle for the police to promote and further their
agenda of community policing. For some it had become a vehicle for personal gain. But that, is a different story. Radio show hosts invited me to come in
and talk about the information.
People came to the office in droves requesting the Working Papers. Ordinary people. Shop-keepers, parents, librarians. High-school students, college students, grand-parents. I took them round to Public servants. Bishops, church officials, contacted me for copies. Within a few days the first print run had disappeared. We requested another run of Working Papers.
When they came to collect the Working Papers so their children could know their history, so they could know about the urban areas. They would say to me 'This is exactly what we need.'
Or, 'I had no idea this was the situation in those areas.'
The Bishops and pastors confessed: 'We have branches of churches there but I didn't realize there was so much going on in the area, so much duplication... So many programs...all of them unco-ordinated...I never knew that Englerston was supposed to be the Coconut Grove - like the Miami grove of Nassau.
College lecturers thanked us for the Working Papers. They were using them as references in their classes for lectures.
How did we manage to do something that no academic institution or Christian Council had managed in over 33 years of Independence? Notice I said 'we'
because this is part of how these results were achieved.
When I came to The Bahamas as Consultant to the Urban Renewal Commission, I thought I would have a research team, but in Bahamas experienced
researchers are few and far between. Through imagination, intuition and good fortune I managed to create a small research team of non-researchers
(except Ria Treco who had had some research experience as an undergraduate).
For a short while we had the assistance of Jeannie Minus (loaned to us from the Department of Statistics, and Linda Moxey-Brown on a brief loan from
Education, but the core team, the people who did most of the work over these three (3) years of existence of the Transformation and Research Unit were
myself (head of the unit), Jewel Major, Rev Poitier, and Ria Treco.
Civil Servants have the reputation of working to the clock. We all know the refrain from the Bahamian Sting song: Who you workin' for? The Government
dem. Who give you that job? My MP. What time your work start? When I reach. What time is it now? Sting Time. So how did I find myself leading a
team where people choose to take pictures of churches in the small hours of the morning for something as elusive as a Working Paper, in a culture
with no wide-spread appreciation for research as such? The answer, is a story of Imagination, Information and Innovation. It is, I believe, one of the
many stories about local innovations which remain largely untold, unknown, unappreciated.
So, when I sat, last Saturday at a round table discussion (between a Canadian Delegation and The Bahamas) about Self-sufficiency and Problem-Solving, and listened to our people, local Bahamians laying out the range of problems in the Bahamas and the Caribbean in such complicated ways, as if there were no examples of local people finding innovative ways of being self-sufficient, in the face of no agreement, my heart sank.
Why aren't we telling these stories of imagination and innovation? Why do we seem not to have the confidence to tell our own stories in our own ways, to
cite our case-studies as it were? Why can we not see that The Mind is the next frontier? Why are we still trying to kill each other off, erase all traces of the past, instead of learning from the innovations? Why can we not see how this way of being, keeps us sitting at the table, like poor people, begging for riches we already have, but cannot yet see. Why? We'll talk about how the innovation of the Transformation and Research Unit (unofficially disbanded around February 2007), what it evolved and how it made history in the weeks to come.
In the meantime, BE PART OF THE NEW ON-LINE SOUL IMAGINATION INITIATIVE TO TELL YOUR STORIES OF THE IMAGINATION AND INNOVATIONS OF BAHAMIANS, AND PEOPLE LIVING IN THE BAHAMAS (PAST AND PRESENT). ALSO YOU ARE INVITED TO COME AND TALK TO ME ABOUT THESE ISSUES AT THE RECEPTION AND OPENING OF MY ART EXHIBITION 'DREAM-MAKER' THIS THURSDAY, MAY 31ST AT CAFE EUROPA, CHARLOTTE STREET, OFF BAY, BETWEEN 6 PM AND 9 PM. Until next week.