Corporate Social Review Magazine 1st Quarter 2013 | Page 97

and how would this affect how they view what they see? Preston
Caribbean Carnival receives funding from various sources and
therefore is to some extent subject to achieving certain criteria
one of which is quality of artwork. I wonder as I often have about
how this gets measured, and if in doing so competitiveness
does more harm than good for community cohesion. I wonder
if freedom of expression is compromised by the creation of
criteria.
I googled “The effects of competition of society” and randomely
selected a piece of writing entitled “Competition is destructive
force in society” by Kaldosi. He says that apart from it being
intrinsic to our nature, that is essential for change and innovation.
He concludes that if used negatively it can cause agression and
would eventually harm our way of life.
I believe that it is impossble to separate the two aspects, with
one comes the other like the presence of the shadow self.
While doing my teacher training we were taught that creating
explicit criteria and using Carl Rogers process of person
centered learning would create fair, impartial and accurate
assessments. I would hope that the various bodies that will now
be assessing Preston Carnival use similar models.
However, I still feel my question lies unanswered, does having
criteria to meet inhibit the freedom of self expression? If I google
this Wikipedia provides me with the definition of Positive liberty
as the possession of the power and resources to fulfill one’s own
poetential without external restraint. and what I mean by this is
that some people may have very rudimentary craft skills or a
niaive handling of materials, or whose objective is not to express
themselves in the mode of popular aesthetics, these people may
feel that their expression is inadequite or judging prejudiced
against them if they are assessed according to artistic quality or
any other set of criteria apart from the desire to create and “jump
up” in the spirit of Carnival.
To play Mas is an abondonement of norm for the untethered
celebration of spirit. To “jump up” is an exhaltation to the freedom
of expression. This is the tradition and idealism I have come to
honour and nurture as the Carnival spirit.

CORPORATE SOCIAL REVIEW
Magazine Final.indd 95

95
2013/07/29 10:48 AM