MONTEGO BAY, St James – The Jamaica Cultural Development Commission’s (JCDC) western region last week launched its slate of activities for Festival 2007, amidst concerns that the high cost of sustaining performing arts programmes in rural schools and the lack of trained experts were hampering cultural development in the region.

According to the organisers, just over 50 per cent of the 282 schools on record in the parishes of Trelawny, St James, Hanover and Westmoreland, had sent in entries for this year’s activities, being staged at a cost of approximately $6 million.

“We are not insulated from the society, so where you have poverty it significantly affects the ability of the school to participate,” said regional manager, Marjorie Leyden-Vernon, at the press launch held at the Wexford Court Hotel in Montego Bay.

Many schools, she added, could scarcely finance a budget to cover costumes, travelling expenses, payment of outside experts and other miscellaneous required to sustain a vibrant programme.

Admittedly, this issue of cost, according to the region’s organisers, was one of the contributing factors accounting for a higher percentage of preparatory schools participating in the competition, compared with basic and primary schools.

“You have more preparatory schools entering where you have tremendous support (financial) from parents,” said Sandra Essor, cultural organiser for Hanover.

While cost remained a factor for many schools, Vernon said the lack of sufficient numbers of trained performing arts personnel in the region was also hampering their work.

“If you look in the region you can hardly find any form of trained performing arts experts,” said Vernon. “We don’t have the natural resource that we can use,” she added, saying that it was rare that they could find even three to five trained persons in a particular area that they could get together for workshops.

Parish organisers also highlighted other factors contributing to the poor participation of some schools, including teacher migration, and poor support from school administration and teaching staff.