Could this be a viable move toward self-sufficiency for the Steelpan Movement? By: Layne Clarke

The past three decades have seen an extraordinary explosion of entrepreneurship and competition in the social sector. The social sector has discovered what the business sector learned from the railroad, the stock market and today’s digital revolution: That nothing is as powerful as a big new idea — if it is in the hands of first class entrepreneurs. The social sector would include any social service provided by individuals, groups and organizations which may improve and/or enhance the lives of others and themselves, culturally, socially and/or in an economic context. Hence our steelpan community, with all its’ components would appear to fit this description. The components will include: steelbands, pan organizations, pan soloists, arrangers, composers, pan tuners, recording studios, graphic artists, stick makers, teachers and more. In short, any individual and/or group who provides a viable social service to our community.

– A move to self-sufficiency and reciprocity.

The job of social entrepreneurs is to recognize when a part of society is stuck and to provide new ways to get it unstuck. Hence, they find what is not working and solves the problem by changing the system, spreading the solution and persuading entire communities to take new leaps. Identifying and solving large-scale social problems requires a social entrepreneur because only the entrepreneur has the committed vision and inexhaustible determination to persist until they have transformed an entire system. Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry. Therefore, the social entrepreneur isn’t just concerned with the notion of becoming self-sufficient. What is expected and built into the notion is that there must be reciprocity - (ie) giving back to the community one serves. Creative resourcing thus becomes a focal point.

What is Creative Resource?
Creative Resource describes an ability to find new ways of engaging the resources in the local environment (i.e. funds, people, goods and services) to support an organization and/or an entity to make it self-sustaining. It encompasses a wide range of types of strategies — from income generation schemes to locally based fundraising to building volunteer constituencies — and finds expression in a variety of fresh approaches which reflect different cultural, social and economic contexts.

We have begun, as a steelpan community to realize, some success with some fresh approaches occurring in recent times. There is obviously more work to be done in the area of creative resourcing. Social entrepreneurship must therefore become a focal point and/or a way of life for all the respective components of our steelband fraternity.