The Collegiate Volume 8, Issue 1.

EDITOR’S NOTE “A place where people bond around shared values, feel valued as human beings, and have a voice in decisions that affect them.”

This is the place.

The place where students find themselves.

Coleen Douglas - Director, Marketing and Communications

In this ISSUE Principal’s Desk The Mutuality of our Being Teaching Drama in a Pandemic with Elizabeth Montoya-Stemann Zooming in at Rex Nettleford Arts Conference Saluting our Graduates 2021 Culture Corner with Dr. Amina Blackwood Meeks,BH{M} Guidance Counsellor Sharon Hare Checking Boxes & Gathers Stones The SBDC at EMCVPA Published by Marketing & Communication Department Editor: Coleen Douglas Proof Reader: Stacy-Ann Lewis Kimberly Hyatt Graphic Design: Robert Ayre Photo Credits: Joni Gordon Robert Ayre Bryan Studios Limited Administration: Sandrene Gregory

The place where staff live their purpose.

The Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts remains the place for the highest quality education in the visual and performing arts in the Englishspeaking Caribbean and simply the coolest little place in Kingston, Jamaica.

For those who knows, know and for those who don’t pay us some attention and I promise you will come to the fullness.

The covid-19 pandemic has completely changed the vibe on campus, and I truly miss the live lunch hour shows, the consistent drumming at school of dance throughout the day and even the students walking by my office window using it as a mirror unaware that they are being seen. Somehow, we managed to get through another semester online and even managed to open the campus a bit, but it is not the same and I look forward to better days when normalcy returns.

Please forgive us for the late distribution of this issue as technology struggles slowed us down last semester and so our culture corner with our College Orator Dr. Amina Blackwood Meeks tells a Christmas Story (as I write this, it is Ethiopian Christmas anyways)!

Semester 1 was filled with positive vibrations from Rex Nettleford Arts Conference which demonstrated the talent and resilience of our staff and students. We salute the graduating class of 2021 who weathered a really tough time but pulled through to the end.

Please help me welcome our Interim Principal Ms. Dorrett Campbell who shares with you in the Principal’s Desk for the first time! Dr. Trudy Ann Barrett bids us farewell in her capacity as Acting Principal as she returns to her substantive post as Vice Principal Academic Affairs, and we give thanks for her hard work over the last two years. Guidance Counsellor Sharon Hare helps us to navigate these times with “checking boxes and gathering stones” and Elizabeth Montoya Stemann shares how she managed teaching drama online in the pandemic.

I am pleased to share a bit of our campus life with you especially in these times and hope you enjoy our first Issue for the Academic Year 2020/2021.

One Perfect Love Coleen Douglas Director, Marketing and Communication

_______________________________ Submit all editorial material to marketing@emc.edu.jm with “The Collegiate Editorial” included in the subject line

FROM THE PRINCIPAL’S DESK THE MUTUALITY OF OUR BEING …

Here’s to another tremendously inspiring publication coordinated by the Marketing and Communications team led by the inimitable Coleen Douglas.

I sincerely hope that each of you can locate yourself in this publication, read it, own it, and live the central message within the confines of its pages.

We function in an environment that has been drastically altered by a seemingly never-ending global health crisis and its concomitant challenges.

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to drastic loss of human life worldwide and presents an unprecedented challenge to public health, food systems, education, and work.

Dorrett Campbell - Interim Principal

Our education systems in the Caribbean and beyond have been severely impacted. School closures have left nearly seven million learners and over 90,000 teachers across 23 countries and territories in the Caribbean subregion grappling with a new reality of distance-learning. Even with the reopening of schools and governments trying to safeguard children and teachers by implementing mandatory vaccination, many students have not returned and may not return to the classrooms.

Our Edna Manley family has not escaped the ravages of COVID. We are well below capacity; several students have had to defer or withdraw because of financial challenges or inability to cope with virtual teaching and learning; staff members have lost loved ones, while others grapple with emotional and mental stressors that gravely impact their ability to function optimally.

But here we are feet firmly planted in the front door of a new year with all its problems and … yes, possibilities. Should we then behave like a dream deferred, curl up, wilt, or just die?

It is in this volatile uncertain complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment that we, like giants, must stay awake, remain alert, learn to dance, develop the new mental attitudes that the situations and conditions demand. The irrefutable truth is that our survival as a creative community lies in our capacity to pre-empt and respond readily and resiliently to the volatility that swirls around us. We can accomplish this, only if we discern and accept our divine mutuality: we need each other to survive.

In the mutuality of our being, there’s no place for wagon-circlers, marble-pickuppers, lone-rangers and highway-drivers. The integrity of our resilience lies in our ability to rise above the narrow confines of our individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity; shelve our self-centered agendas to see the forest instead of the trees; stand and work together for the good of the whole. Martin Luther King Jr once said, “the individual or nation that feels that it can live in isolation has allowed itself to sleep through a revolution. The geographical togetherness of the modern world makes our very existence dependent on co-existence. We must all learn to live together as brothers (and sisters) or we will all perish together as fools.”

This observation is as apt now as it was in 1959 when King addressed the Morehouse College graduation.

In the mutuality of our sorrows, we need to build relationships that transcend narrow selfish agendas to embracing and activating the selfless spirit of icons like Barbara Requa, matriarch of dance, who gave more than three decades of selfless service to our creative community.

Technology has made it very easy for us to keep touch with one another, but it has also made it very easy for us to be shallow in our relations with one another. We hide and speak, chatter and flatter, tweet and deceive and say all the politically correct things, when they matter, in the hope of manipulating others to our own conniving ends. But I hope that we as a people can move beyond the shallowness of our soundbites, our Face Book banters and our twittering tweets to engaging in meaningful dialogue that solves social problems and spawns solid relationships with the people with whom we interact and serve on our daily trajectory, through life.

In the mutuality of our solace, our VUCA environment demands that we step out of the cocoon of our self-absorption and be concerned about the quality of social interaction in our space: our community, our country. It seems that we have lost a sense of direction in our morals, values, attitudes, and time-honoured traditions. It is this seeming loss of direction that has resulted in chicanery, lotto scamming and the high incidence of youth gang and gun violence in our regional space. Technology has somewhat aided and abetted this strange sub-culture of crassness and ruthlessness.

In the mutuality of our being, our sorrows and our solace, we ought to blaze examples of goodness, kindness, gentleness, wholesomeness, reciprocity and respect for diversity; for this is the mission to which we have been called: to respond to human need; transform society, to espouse values of love, excellence, integrity and servanthood to the glory of God. In the mutuality of our misery, stay woke!

A Lesson in Resilience Whereas the year 2021 continued to be nothing short of being eventful, it will fittingly be etched into the annals of history as yet another marker of our resilience as a community.

Considering the perpetual constraints that we have had to confront as a community, what we have achieved together is nothing short of phenomenal. Not only have we managed to stay afloat in a period where the cultural and creative sectors were acutely challenged, but we also continued to promote the visual and performing arts through our suite of programmes, events, and partnerships. Importantly too, we fared well during our recent programmatic re-accreditation exercise; celebrated a record number of honours scholars’ awardees; and graduated another cohort amidst a global pandemic.

I wish to sincerely thank our students, faculty, staff, senior and middle managers, and vested stakeholders, for your loyalty and commitment amid the persisting uncertainties. I commend your unprecedented efforts to explore alternatives to creatively plug the void that could have resulted from limited exposure to kinesthetic experiences and in-person interactions. Our progress under trying circumstances has therefore been encouraging--though there is much more to achieve--and I trust that going forward our efforts will only be accelerated.

Dr. Trudy Ann Barrett - Vice Principal Academic Affairs

In this spirit, I wish to reiterate my gratitude for being afforded the privilege to serve my alma mater and you, as your Acting Principal, over the past twenty-two (22) months. My tenure officially ends on December 31, 2021; however, I will continue to serve you in my substantive capacity of Vice Principal - Academic Affairs. In the same breath, I use the opportunity to welcome aboard our Interim Principal, Ms Dorrett Campbell, and wish her the very best for the new chapter ahead.

In concluding, here’s hoping that we will do our individual and collective parts to assure a safe return to the classrooms, labs, studios, concert hall, theatres, practice fields, halls of residence, office spaces and the general campus environment in 2022. As we move forward, I urge us to do so in a spirit of solidarity, love, and mutual respect. May we accordingly optimise the break to rejuvenate our minds, bodies, and spirits so that we may emerge from the global health pandemic with greater clarity, focus, passion, and vigour toward the advancement of our mission.

Wishing for you and your families a memorable, peaceful, safe and COVID-19 free year! Let’s remember the less fortunate among us and keep the candle burning for those we have lost along the way.

May 2022 be a meaningful and purpose-filled year for us all!

Every blessing.

CHECKING BOXES GATHERING STONES - Sharon Hare

Flowers and Feathers…Healing After Loss You didn’t see it coming, or perhaps you did. You hoped for the best. Reached way back into your cache of hope, and faith but like trying to grasp a wad of butter, she slipped away from life and living and there was nothing you could do to stop the inevitable.

Over the next few days, you anticipate her arrival at familiar places and wait for her voice on the other end of the phone line.

Days and weeks merge and your emotions shift from sadness to anger to calm to emotional fatigue to confusion and you think to yourself that you will never have another normal day.

But it’s the memories that hit you in the gut. The remember whens, remember whats…You want to laugh but any sliver of normality feels like a betrayal of the love that sustained you.

You watch people bustling around their daily routines as if they didn’t know she’d just died and you feel strangely distant from it all…As if they are in a dream while you remain riveted in this world- turned upside -down.

And why are they smiling? Why are businesses open for merchandizing and headlines scream the latest COVID scare and not the fact of her passing?

Every day is different, but what is not is her passing, a reality which sits uncomfortably in your gut and no amount of shifting or repositioning can dislodge the certainty of that mysterious, dreadful absence.

Change forces its way into your world like unwelcome attention.

Grieving is a natural expression of the pain associated with the permanent loss of a significant attachment and death is traumatizing.

Yet, when you open yourself to the normality of this grieving and all the emotions surrounding this personal and private experience, you recognize that your grief deserves an airing and that everything you feel is valid and deserves to be acknowledged and reckoned with.

There is no weakness in this grieving. Tears and pain and brokenness are the stuff of which refashioning and recreating are made.

Your grief is a story needing to be told and loving, supportive, compassionate friends and acquaintances are the perfect audience, you discover.

Your journal becomes a prized friend. You pour minutes, days and month of weeping, of agony, of regret, of memories into its wondrous waiting. Letters to your beloved now-deceased, leave you relieved of the burden of carrying that conversion never realized, that apology, that explanation, that demand for apology or explanation never expressed.

You are kinder, gentler with yourself now. Fragile feelings are best treated with kindness.

Light as feathers, fragrant as flowers, your grief is now transformed as it transforms you…In time…Always, in time.

For grieving has no timelines, no formulas. As unique as a fingerprint, so is the process of grieving for each one touched by loss.

Eventually, the love and joy in remembering is more prominent than the pain of her passing and you realize…In time...

Always in time… That her legacy lives on in you and everyone touched by her life. For now you have begun to build your life around this grieving and find that if you allow it, the structure is more enduring as you discover new capacities for loving, persevering, for overcoming and now you dare life to throw you its worst calamity. For after this, what?

TEACHING DRAMA ONLINE - Elizabeth Montoya-Stemann

Voice and Speech IB March, 2020

Drama is live art that requires the presence of a human being in an empty space called theatre. In this space and with much work, collaboration, and dedication, actors and directors can create another world in its fullness for an audience. The value of Drama is those moments when we encounter each other and identify with our ideas and sentiments etc., in the same theatrical space.

On March 13, 2020, the drama started. Six new cases of Covid-19 were reported in Jamaica, and this situation forced us to change our ways of social interaction. The doors of our School of Drama, including our beloved Dennis Scott Theatre, had to close until further notice. Actors and audience had to be in separate spaces even though we wanted to meet and interact.

New electronic platforms have become relevant for us at this moment. Though not without connectivity glitches, this new media allowed us to continue creating collective moments in our online drama classes and productions. Our students are accustomed to working in Drama School studios, connecting with their bodies, imagination, voices and each other’s energy. They had to act behind a computer screen, tablet, or cell phone. Language became vital in this recently discovered way of interaction. Every utterance was a source of inspiration and much-needed motivation in this unprecedented moment where human contact and synergy were missing.

Voice and Speech IA class, September 2020

Encouraged by constant feedback and our understanding of performance demands, whether live or recorded, the screen became a new medium to bravely open our inner selves.

Being together and trying to keep our community of creatives exploring new ways to communicate was a lifesaver for many.

Our home space became the “working space”, as we call it in online classes; this was the most difficult dramatic element to be designed virtually. Lecturers and set designers had to help students transform their home spaces into theatre spaces.

Despite the sometimes-draining virtuality, mutual respect, commitment, patience, and inspiration kept us present.

Students developed a keen sense to work with images and an unstoppable search for creativity to channel their creative energy. Making videos of their performances became a new skill; however, image is not all. If you are not inspired and prepared, your interaction with the audience will suffer. This is the most important experience for an actor.

We established important connections with theatre professionals living in different parts of the world; this was enriching.

We were together and gave life to some quality moments that fed our passion for drama. This passion must keep our drama running the show, whether on the screen or the stage.

Still, we want to come back to the stage to see and feel the human synergy in person. Long live D.R.A.M.A!

Saluting our Graduating Class of 2021

Blossoming & Releasing

CHANGE MAKER

GRADUATION 2021

PAMELLA CHANG - VALEDICTORIAN

Our graduating class of 2021 stood tall and proud despite the restrictions of the pandemic and gathered online with their friends and family for Graduation Production 2021 under the artistic direction of Ms. Dorraine Reid, Lecturer School of Drama and Ibo Cooper, School of Music, Paul Newman, School of Dance and Mr. Leighton Jones, Director School of Continuing Education.

Congratulations Class of 2021 – “go work in the morn of a new creation…until you have reached the height of self-progress, and from that pinnacle bestow upon the world a civilization of your own.” – Marcus Garvey

DANIEL RICKETTS

JOVAUN WALKER

NICKEISHA HABIB

ARTNEAL JONES

SANIEL RICKETTS

KEZIAH SMITH

LESCHAE GRANT

JOAN McKENZIE

AJAY WHILTLE

KAMOY GORDON

DEMARIO HARDING

JADE RANKINE

ZAVIER CHEVERRIA

TRESANA PEARSON

SASHA-KAY HINDS

OLIVEA JAMES

JOHNOY DAVIS

SHAUNA-GAYE MURRAY-COKE

ROJAE PYNE

DEVON REYNOLDS

TASHIEMA HOWARD-SMALL

STEPHEN STANBERRY

CHLOE LAWRENCE

VICTORIA TAFFE

RAJHEAN RODRIQUES

CHRISTINE DESLANDES

LUSHANE TUCKER

AMMOY SMITH

JELANI GUTHRIE

CRYS-ANN GAYLE

GIOVANNI GOBERN

KIMBERLY MITCHELL

TORI-ANN KING

JHANEIL SMITH

PAUL SAMUELS

MOSES McLEAN

TONI-ANN FALCONER

JOSHUA DOUGLAS

MARIO GIDARISINGH

KRYSTEN HENRY

MIGUEL ANDERSON

ORACIA MORRIS

Dr. Amina Blackwood Meeks, BH {M} College Orator

Culture Corner

WISHING YOU A SENSEI-FOWL CHRISSMUS Miss Lady sat down recently with her millennial friend Likkle Miss Jing Bang to talk about Christmas in 2021. Miss Lady should receive a national award for the patience she exhibited after Jing Bang asked if Christmas in the twenty-first century was any different from it was in 2020. Miss Lady painstakingly explained that the twenty-first century has been around since the year 2000 and that the twentieth century did not end in 2020 to make way for the twenty-first century in 2021.

She did concede, however that so much has happened since 2020 that to many people it seemed like enough to fill an entire century. According to her one sure marker of the changes is in the way some people dress like sensei fowl.

Poor Likkle Miss Jing Bang had never heard of a sensei fowl?

Miss Lady explained that a sensei fowl could be described as the poultry equivalent of pitchy-patchy. Oh, dear, Likkle Miss Jing had not heard of that either. She had never seen a jonkunnu band.

OK, you are forgiven for thinking it was John Canoe or jankanno or jukannu or any other massacraw of the name.

Oh, so now you want to correct it to massacre! Just like Likkle Miss Jing Bang, well boasy with the French part of the heritage and having not a clue about a sensei fowl.

Miss Lady summoned every ounce of the best teacher inside her to lay it out that a sensei fowl is a chicken, and yes,

everyone knows that a fowl is a grown-up chicken so a sensei fowl could never be a chicken of any sort but since in the Jamaican culture no one ever eats fowl no matter how mature it is before it curried or jerked, a sensei fowl is a chicken about which many unpleasant things are spoken.

It is a chicken with sparse, uneven, sometimes barely-there feathers. It is often used metaphorically for human beings and never as a compliment. A few Jamaican sayings will suffice. If someone were to say of another “Yu maaga an fava sensei fowl” the speaker really intends to say dem skinny and pop down.

And let it not be said of you that “Good fowl a go a market, sensei fowl pick up himself an sey him a go too. “That is the same thing as saying “dishclaat come out a buttery an waan tun tableclaat.” Loosely translated, that means that someone is affecting the airs of an economic and social class to which they can only aspire but in which they can never belong. The millennial equivalent is to say “That is above your pay grade.”

According to Miss Lady, you might well conclude that with all these unflattering references to sensei fowl, the poor bird would ensure that it did not encounter the light of day. But au contraire, sensei fowl refuses to take a back seat. Instead, sensei resorts to prayer. People who eavesdrop on other people’s conversation with the Almighty report in another Jamaican phrase that “Sensei fowl sey him nuh pray fe fedda, him pray fe life.”

According to Miss Lady, that is the biggest difference between Christmas 2020 and Christmas 2021. People appear to have almost forgotten bout pretty-pretty dan-dan and fandangles.

Some might be secretly happy that tearup-tearup is big fashion.

Be that as it may, she says that she has observed that every other salutation includes, “Be well” or “Stay well” or “Stay safe” or some such expression of a desire to see each other again and to remain in good health. Indeed, she says, we

seem to have become a sensei-fowl nation. In the midst of all the grumblings about isolation and social distancing and jab or not, just like that there is agreement on one thing – life is the most precious possession of all.

She is personally grateful for the opportunity to give thanks for the Life that gives Christmas meaning.

So this year she is signing all her Christmas cards with the same phrase: “Wishing you a sensei-fowl Chrismuss. Give thanks for life.”

PAUSE... BREATHE... IN A SOCIALLY DISTANCED, INTERCONNECTED WORLD: LOOKING BACK AT REX NETTLEFORD ARTS CONFERENCE 2021 We celebrated the 6th Biennial Rex Nettleford Arts Conference online from October 6-8, 2021, under the theme ‘The Arts: Decolonising the Spirit’. The Conference examined the role and place of the arts in current dialogue on social, cultural, and political discourse. This theme underscores a journey of decolonisation that is pivotal to and through the arts, especially in the 21st century. Established in 2011, the bi-annual conference honours the life and works of dancer, writer and scholar, Professor the Hon. Raltson Milton “Rex” Nettleford, founder of the National Dance Theatre Company (NDTC) and a major influence on the development of the School of Dance. The Rex Nettleford Arts Conference brings together arts educators and artists/es from all over the world to share their knowledge and experiences as well as research in the creative and cultural industries.

This must give us pause. Breathe.

We use this opportunity to celebrate the hardworking team led by Conference co-chairs Kerry Ann Henry and Roger Williams, VP Administration and Resource Development and Acting Vice Principal Academic Affairs

Conference Secretariat: Mrs. Joan Phillips-Bennett Web Designer & Administrator: Mrs. Susan Lee Quee and Mr. Michael Walker Execution: Production Manager Dr. Anthea Octave Assistant Production Manager Ms. Sophia McKain, Technical Mr. Yakub Grant Sub-Committee Chairs and Volunteers: Programmes: Chairs: Dr. Anthea Octave and Ms. Sophia McKain Mrs. Wendy-Ann Brissett Ms. Renee Kitson

Ms. Neila Ebanks Programmes/Technical Joint Committee: Ms. Neila Ebanks Mrs. Wendy-Ann Brissett Ms. Renee Kitson Mr. Kimalea Campbell Mrs. Susan Lee Quee Ms. Paula Daley Mr. Michael Walker Multimedia Services: Mr. Yakub Grant Mr. Jesse Golding Mr. Kamau Williams Mr. Tesfa Edwards Mr. Norman Chambers Mr. Abigail Collins Volunteers: Ms. Yulanah Mullings Mr. Kimalea Campbell Mr. Kanille Brudy (Alumnus) Ms. Simone Harrison (Student, SAMH) Ms. Tianna Bruce (Student, SVA) Ms. Junette Alexander (Student, SVA, Vice President -Student Council)

Conference On Screen Hosts Dr. Amina Blackwood Meeks, BH(M) Ms. Coleen Douglas Rapporteurs: Ms. Wendy-Ann Brissett Mr. Owen Ellis Ms. Regina Brown Ms. Suzanne Beadle Chairs for Conference Sessions: Ms. Kerry-Ann Henry Dr. Keino Senior Mr. Michael Layne Dr. Amina Blackwood Meeks, BH(M) Ms. Dorraine Reid Mr. Owen Blakka Ellis Ms. Kai Wiggan, Student Council President, EMCVPA Mr. Marvin George Mr. Roger Williams Mrs. Elizabeth Montoya-Stemann Mr. Kyran O’Connor Mrs. Miriam Hinds Smith Mr. Marlon Simms Dr. Trudy-Ann Barrett Mr. Andre Adman

20 21

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Advisor: Dr. Trudy-Ann Barrett

Ms. Kerry-Ann Chen, SAMH Representative on the Student Council, EMCVPA Lee Rose Ms. Neila Ebanks Ms. Renee Kitson Finance: Ms. Marlene Vanriel Performance: Chairs: Mr. Marlon Simms Mr. Camille Quamina Hospitality Chairs: Mr. Ricardo Wilks Volunteers: Ms. Precious Griffiths Mrs. Karen Gayle Mrs. Valrie Harris Mason Ms. Antisha Williams Mr. Conroy Howell Registration: Chairs: Mrs. Melody McDowell Ms. Regina Brown

ICT: Chairs: Mr. Michael Walker Mr. Romel Montague Mrs. Susan Lee Quee Mr. Carlson Smith Mr. Yakub Grant Multimedia Services: Chairs: Mr. Yakub Grant Mr. Jesse Golding Mr. Kamau Williams Mr. Tesfa Edwards Mr. Norman Chambers Ms. Abigail Collins Breakout Rooms and Logistics: Ms. Tianna Bruce (Student, SVA) Ms. Junette Alexander (Student, SVA, Vice President -Student Council) Art Tour: Mr. Yakub Grant and Mr. Carlo Less (External to the College)

Volunteers: Ms. Laura Lee Jones

Website: Susan Lee Quee Carlson Smith Kadir Martin (Alumnus) - Website Graphics

Marketing and Public Relations: Chairs: Ms. Coleen Douglas Ms. Stacy-Ann Lewis

Conference Opening & Edward Seaga Lecture: Dr. Amina Blackwood Meeks, BH(M)

Social Media: Ms. Kimberly Hyatt

Festival of the Word: Dr. Amina Blackwood Meeks, BH(M)

Facilities: Chair: Mr. Ryan Gayle

Production Coordinator: Ms. Abena Chevannes

Exhibition: Chairs: Mrs. Miriam Hinds Smith, Ms. Paula Daley and Mr. Stefan Clarke

Scene Designer: Ms. Abena Chevannes Ms. Coleen Douglas and Mr. Marlon Simms

Curating and Technical: Ms. Yulanah Mullings Mr. Carlson Smith

Breathing Breaks & Conference Closing: Mr. Marvin George

Leaders of Breathing Breaks (External to the College) Ms. Lucia Ellis Garifuna, Belize; Ms. Kamalwattie Ramsubeik Hindu, Trinidad and Tobago; Mr. Verman Thomas Revivalism, Jamaica; Mr. Erwin Tolin Alexander Maroon, Suriname; Mr. Ade Ola Pascal Spiritual Baptist/Orisha, Trinidad and Tobago Dr. John Hunte Spiritual Baptist, Barbados Closing Lyme: Year 3 Arts Management Students and 1 Creative Yaad Ms. Simone Harrison Ms. Shana Kay Abdul Ms. Chelsea Gregory Ms. Ottavia Osbourne Ms. Kerry-Ann Chen Graphics: Mrs. Susan Lee Quee Mr. Robert Ayre Conference Programme: Mr. Robert Ayre Steering Committee Member: Dr. Keino Senior

DEVELOP YOUR SMALL BUSINESS AT SBDC AT EMCVPA The Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts (SBDC@ EMC) provides educational programs and no-cost, confidential consulting services to creative entrepreneurs looking to start or grow a small business, to provide the information they need to make critical decisions, The Small Business Development Center (SBDC) at the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts is the resource entrepreneurs in all sectors of the Creative and Cultural Industry (CCI) can turn to for help – help that can make the difference between success and failure.

Located on the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts at 1 Author Wint Drive, Kingston 5, the SBDC is close to Jamaica’s main business district and easily accessible to clients. Thanks to other economic development agencies that serve as outreach partners, the SBDC also has access to convenient meeting locations throughout Jamaica.

HAVE AN IDEA?

HAVE A BUSINESS?

Guidance to Start-up/Pre-Start-up The SBDC can offer guidance and support in these areas: • Education and Guidance about Starting a Business • Feasibility/Idea Development • Steps to Get to Business Ownership • Identifying & Navigating Licensing & Regulations • Business/ Strategic Planning • Identifying and Obtaining Financing

Guidance to Established Businesses The SBDC can offer guidance and support in these areas:

• Gathering Research • Market Analysis and Marketing Plan Development • Social Media Strategy • Grand Openings and Planning

• Social Media Strategy • Financial Management/ Recordkeeping • HR/Managing Employees • Hosting Valuable Internships • Business Continuity Planning • Re-Openings, Open House, Event Planning

• Business Expansion and Planning • Addressing Challenges, Business Improvement Strategies • Business / Strategic Plan • Financing Options, Ideas, Preparation • Marketing & Identifying New Markets

For more information or to Request SBDC Consulting for your start-up, for-profit small business email us at SBDC@emc.edu.jm or call (876) 619-3362 ext 2008.

The Collegiate is a newsletter published by the Marketing and Communications Department of EMCVPA