A (Small?) Working Week in Suva

This week at work has been much busier than the first week with the Fiji Museum. There is still quite a bit of data entry involved in the work that we're doing, as the initial project Jackie and I have been given is building databases.

Jackie hard at work, digitizing student files. Cheerfully!

 I have been given the additional responsibility of putting together a Project Proposal, and it highlights what seem to be one of the key factors of work life in Fiji; under resourcing. The Fiji Museum was so under-resourced that the Conservation Department consisted of two staff members doing the work there in their spare time, when their other responsibilities had been filled. At the Arts Council, it's again a case of being chronically short-staffed, to the point that things like a database of Arts Council members has fallen to the wayside. The funding proposal I'm working on has, as it's main sponsor for the National Art Exhibition and Awards, Foster's Group Pacific Limited. It's an odd partnership, to say the least. Would you ever expect to see Fosters sponsor an equivalent event in Australia? But their sponsorship has meant that the Arts Council has an impressive collection of local artworks, all winners of the National Fine Art Award.

Art and artefact at the Fiji Arts Council - the former made possible by Fosters.

It's an easy thing to see, when put in context like that, the kind of vicious cycle of belittlement that Hau'ofa speaks of. It would be very easy to ascribe to and perpetuate the idea that Fiji is too small, too lacking in skills or resources. When combined with the rather pliable relationship with time that seems to be the norm here, it's not hard to envision how ideas of laziness and inferiority when compared with a Western equivalent might become established or ingrained (with no small help from Westerners themselves, I'm sure). When held in that light, it becomes quite clear quite quickly how important it is that a cycle of belittlement as in Hau'ofa's article is avoided. The staff of the Arts Council knows they're under staffed and under resourced, but it doesn't stop them from pursuing things like the project I'm writing a proposal for – the funding source might seem unorthodox, but the mission is accomplished all the same. By contrast, and it's an important point that Jackie made, the conception of smallness at the Fiji Museum might play a much larger psychological role in their own conception of their capabilities. They think they're too small, too under-funded, too dependent on international aid for things such as display cases or storage, and the result might just be a case of not seeing the forest for the trees. There might be potential for expansion that can't be seen, space to be maximised or reorganised. In the end, it does seem that where there's a will, there's a way.