At present, Creative Arts Education in Guyana is supervised by a poorly staffed, poorly budgeted Unit of Allied Arts, Ministry of Education which receives some support for Visual Arts coming from the Council for Technical and Vocational Education (TVET).  What we are proposing is the creation, by legislation of a National Creative Arts Education Council that designs and supervises the Arts component of our STEAM policy and which will roll out a comprehensive arts education programme, starting with creativity in early childhood education and ending with tertiary level certification in the creative arts and industries, both in and out of the formal education system. 

The Council’s mandate will include supervision of municipal and other community-based arts education programmes, in collaboration with the National Cultural Commission (See National Cultural Policy) and other partners including, for example, the Prison Service, in introducing arts education to the incarcerated.

In addition to general arts education development and implementation in Guyana, the Council membership will serve as the core board for two facilities:

A Creative Arts Secondary School – this will be a facility with residential capacity that focuses exclusively on secondary and some post-secondary (and equivalent) education with basic courses in Math, English, Indigenous and other languages.

The Institute of Creative Arts – while there is currently a collective of arts education facilities being referred to as ‘The Institute of Creative Arts’, no such actual facility exists.  What TCI will do is  consolidate the management of all four entities, develop a pathway for certification in all current disciplines and new ones, and establish a main facility in Demerara with satellite campuses in Regions 2 (Anna Regina), 6 (New Amsterdam) and 9 (Lethem).

The Council will also work with the relevant institutions to design a tripartite arts education programme that focuses on three areas and three institutions: training and certification in creative art education will be undertaken at the Cyril Potter College of Education; creative arts theory will be primarily done at the University of Guyana; and creative arts for creative industries programmes will be the responsibility of the Institute of Creative Arts.