With all the public furor over the Bliss Center for the Performing Arts, the pressing questions are who will pay for it, who will use it, and for how much.
Well, for all those who care to know, the organization is making itself publicly accountable with a work plan that is available to the public. It lays out the plans for work that will be carried out in the performing arts, archaeology, the houses of culture and the museum.
Yasser Musa, President of NICH
"It outlines the entire fiscal year 2004/2005 and what the various institutes under NICH will be doing specifically in the area for example at the Institute of Creative Arts at the Bliss there is an ambitious program that we have outlines that includes the enhancement of our festival of arts which is an annual thing but this year we are going to expand it to the secondary school level. We are doing new things like the brukdown competition. Of course we are having again our Punta festival and we are going to push a music week in January of 2005. But those are some of the big things and there are of course the regular things that go on the Bliss in terms of technical training, artistic development - the show so to speak has just begun."
"In the beginning obviously, we've had a kind of downtime with the construction of the Bliss and now with the new opening there is a sort of enthusiasm and excitement in the artistic community. I want to say very clearly that we are very open, any artist can come to the Bliss, any organization can come to the Bliss and talk to our director Andy Palacio. He is a very accessible and open-minded person he is an artist himself. Obviously we have a calendar and a lot of programs going on and we would like to have a reciprocal relationship meaning we understand that only so much can be done in terms of a given year but we would like to fit everybody in."
"So there is an overall plan for all the institutes of NICH. Now this plan is just a framework, it doesn't mean that other things can't happen. Of course we want to have more things but of course we are limited by our budget and we are conscious that not everything can be done in a year so our plan just gives a very aggressive outline but we are open to new ideas as well."
The work plan is available to the public at the Museum of Belize, the Houses of Culture and the Bliss Center for the Performing Arts.