How might we more sustainably fund the arts and heritage preservation? We might devise a more comprehensive national endowment which may provide grants for the arts and culture, and the preservation and promotion of Bahamian heritage.

Such an endowment will not manage our cultural institutions or replace the Antiquities, Monuments and Museums Corporation (AMMC). Its primary mission will be to secure, manage, invest, and distribute the financial resources needed to help sustain an array of grants, including to AMMC.

Such an endowment should operate as a quasi-non-governmental organisation with a governance structure, which guarantees its independence and places a firewall between it and partisan politics.

Such an entity should be run by a blue ribbon board and management team with experience in fundraising and financial management.

The endowment may be capitalised with a dynamic funding mix of Bahamians at home and in the Diaspora, as well as from international partners here and overseas. We might consider including a corporate citizen mechanism in various heads of agreements.

The endowment would be a means for corporate citizens and individuals looking for more effective ways to contribute to the preservation and advancement of the various arts and heritage programmes.

Bahamians abroad are often desirous of giving back to the Bahamas. Ongoing initiatives may be launched to encourage individual Bahamians and associations abroad to donate.

An endowment of this nature may be able to tap into a highly affluent donor base. It may also serve as conduit for grants from a variety of international philanthropic groups and countries who wish to contribute.

Over time it may also raise and invest the tens of millions of dollars needed to better protect our built heritage, dynamise our cultural institutions, and help support more Bahamian artistic expression.

Our rich built heritage includes forts from Fincastle to Montagu, ruins from Clifton to Cat Island, historic sites from Long Island to Long Cay, and a diversity of monuments, museums and antiquities.

Since 1973, there has been an explosion of cultural expression in the arts, particularly the visual arts. From dance to the dramatic arts and from poetry to photography, the Bahamas has a cornucopia cum dazzle of talent.

The endowment may provide support to the next Joseph Spence, Paul Meeres, Brent Malone, or Kayla Lockhart Edwards.

In previous times, wealthy entrepreneurs, celebrities, and adventurers have generously donated to a variety of philanthropic causes in the Bahamas ranging from health care to education and the arts.

There are also many generous Bahamians, like Lowell Mortimer and Sir Franklyn Wilson, who have given to a variety of causes. A number of Bahamian and international companies have donated to various institutions and programmes.

Those who make a home in The Bahamas, including citizens, residents and second homeowners, as well as Bahamians in the Diaspora, who return frequently, all have a shared interest in the development of the Bahamas and the creation of world class country, which preserves its natural heritage and celebrates a rich cultural heritage.

Institutions like the Dundas are in need of such support through a more advanced system of philanthropic giving.

A friend recalls going to the Dundas Centre for the first time decades ago to watch a live performance of a play, returning thereafter over the years for a smorgasbord of productions ranging from dramas to musicals.

There were things he could not grasp at the young age of 12 when he first entered the Centre on Mackey Street, an oasis of sorts for cultural expression featuring Bahamian and international offerings.

He remembers his overall impressions of the performances. They were luscious, exciting, entertaining. The roaring and stentorian voices of the lead actors filled the theater and his imagination.

The costumes, the sets and the music transported the audience and the boy beyond The Bahamas. The vibrations of the crowd laughing together at a pratfall or crying at a moment of loss engendered a shared experience.

Theatre stirs empathy. It mirrors the scars, warts and goodness of a society. The performing arts promote human and cultural development, inducing pleasure and enjoyment as well as discomfort and, sometimes, revolution.

Theater is a locus where the language of words and emotions may blend into an elixir or alchemy that often exposes souls and consciousness to unexpected revelations and transformation beyond one’s conceits, delusions, prejudices, repressions.

Theater serves as a dynamic space promoting a broader aesthetic of life, intrigued by truth, goodness and beauty, discoverable and interrogated through comedy, satire, tragedy and other genres of the imagination.

In her presentation, “Planet Afire: Critical Thinkers and Literary Artists, Climb Down from Olympus and Stop Fiddling While it Burns,” poetess and author Patricia Glinton Meicholas laments the paucity of greater support for the creative commons:

“The Orange Economy is the new black in The Bahamas, the faux haute couture of cultural awareness.

“Nowadays, the term features heavily in the sound bites of politicians, mostly mouthed in international forums to engender respect, but not from any action-oriented conviction. Theatre arts sponsor critical but safe modelling of life to foster peace-learning.”

In 1992, the annual subvention to the Bahamas National Trust was $25,000. This rose over the years culminating in 2007 to a one million dollar a year subvention by the Government of The Bahamas. The driver behind this was former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham.

The National Trust has a statutory relationship with the Government but retains its independence in managing the national park system, a unique relationship that dates back to its inception.

The National Centre for the Performing Arts is government-owned, while the Dundas is “a private not-for-profit company set up in trust for the Bahamian people.” How might the Dundas and various performing arts groups secure greater funding?

Such groups should maintain their independence free of state control over what they wish to produce. There is a long history of governments given annual grants to non-profits.

The Bahamas Government has supported the arts in various ways, though there is more that may be done to enlighten officials and get other creatives and stakeholders to become advocates on one’s behalf.

While it is necessary to hold governments accountable, it is essential to build broader community support for an institution, and not continuously scold government officials. Theater is expensive and labor intensive. However, it should not be fully funded by goveenment.

The Dundas and the performing arts require myriad capital, including bold and creative ideas and thinking from the board and members of the Dundas on its proposed future and what it may need to do to elicit greater public and other support.

The centre will require several million over the next few years for its development and recurrent needs. The many millions required for its sustainability, and broader cultural enrichment and heritage preservation, require a modern and professional philanthropic mindset and system in The Bahamas.

• Parts of this column are being republished in part, because of the ongoing dire state of the finances of the Dundas Centre for the Performing Arts and last year’s collapse of the Reinhard Hotel.