BRANDAID Project In Jacmel
JESSICA LEEDER
JACMEL, HAITI — From Tuesday's Globe and Mail Published on Tuesday, Mar. 02, 2010 12:00AM EST Last updated on Thursday, Mar. 04, 2010 6:56PM EST
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At 6½ feet tall with shoulders that would make a linebacker cringe, Pierre Edgard Satyr does not look like a man who needs rescuing. Smartly dressed in black jeans and polished shoes, he is nevertheless shepherding his guardian angel - a goateed man named Thor - through the dusty piles of rubble that are all that is left of his professional life.
Inside his beachside workshop, a tin-roofed cave of a room crammed with the life-sized shells of papier mâché figures that survived Haiti's earthquake, it takes some coaxing to get the 42-year-old artist to admit that he wakes up in a camp for the displaced each day unsure of how to feed his family.
"I don't have to be dressed like a slob to get aid," said Mr. Satyr, who is president of Jacmel's main artists collective. "If someone is coming to talk to you, they'll understand you need help."
The first person to really do that was Thor Burnham, a Creole-speaking Canadian who was sent to Jacmel by a Toronto-based organization called Brandaid to help Haiti's artisans get back on their feet. Established in 2008 to market the work of artists from the world's poorest nations, Brandaid used exhibits in Los Angeles and at New York Fashion Week to quickly raise the profile of Haitian artists in the international marketplace.
When the earthquake struck, the nature of the project changed. Now, Brandaid Haiti is focused on rebuilding two key communities of artisans that were nearly wiped out by the quake: the metal artists of Croix de Bouquets and, in Jacmel, the legendary craft masters of papier mâché.
The goal is to revive Haiti's arts and crafts industry and connect it with major North American retail distributors. In a larger sense, it is also about getting the artists back into their workshops and contributing to the rebuilding of Haiti's economy. "The multiplier effect of the artisan community is huge," explained Mr. Burnham, the project's director of development.
On his first postquake visit to Jacmel's artists, Mr. Burnham found a desperate community in physical and financial ruin. The 40 or so ateliers used by the mask-makers were so badly damaged as to be unusable. Insurance is a rarity here, and many artists had taken out loans for materials they needed to produce masks for the annual carnival. In many cases, the earthquake destroyed their work and their homes, leaving them with no way to generate an income, let alone pay off their loans.
If that weren't enough to bring papier-mâché-making to a halt, the disruption in the artists' supply chain was. They're still having trouble purchasing from the Port-au-Prince trading companies they rely on for everything from flour (to make paste) to cardboard and paintbrushes.
To get the artists working again, Brandaid commissioned Mr. Satyr and his organization to create a series of postquake papier mâché figures that will be displayed across Canada as part of a travelling Haitian art exhibition. "We want the collection to really evoke the relationship that now exists between humanity and Haiti, specifically the Canadian and the Haitian people," said Cameron Brohman, a former resident of Haiti who has a background in international development and is one of the project's founders. "We've got a big, big bond between us as a result of this awful tragedy."
The show, which has attracted large corporate sponsors such as Scotiabank, is just one element of the Brandaid plan, which will also establish an Artisan Investment Fund to create a pool of capital to support micro-enterprises. Another pillar aims to broaden the export market for Haitian artists in the United States, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and China.
Part of Brandaid's mandate is to backstop artists by helping them market their products to retail heavyweights and to hold open a window into current market trends. Those aims have been made easier by Brandaid's star-studded list of co-founders, including Tony Pigott, CEO of the ad agency J. Walter Thompson Canada; Paul Haggis, the Academy Award-winning director and writer, and David Belle, a filmmaker and entrepreneur who founded Haiti's only film school, Ciné Institute.
Although its reincarnation is barely complete, Brandaid is already deep in discussions with a major U.S. retailer that is considering placing a 100,000-unit order for papier mâché Christmas decorations.
"We believe marketing can really play a big role in the developing world," Mr. Burnham said. "These micro-enterprises are so important to the grassroots, handmade economy in a very poor country like Haiti."
Even at this early stage, the Brandaid proposal has become a lifeline for Mr. Satyr and his fellow artists. Even though they are sleeping in the streets, he said, most would rather receive aid in the form of support for their art than the food and water being handed out by humanitarian agencies.
"Humanitarian aid will help people, but it won't give people jobs," Mr. Satyr said. "The creation of art puts people back to work."
At the same time, reopening Jacmel's workshops will help Haiti heal. "The creation of art is one of the ways people can realize life goes on - that they can't be consumed by what happened," he said. "This is about sharing what we do best."
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