In what comes as a significant development in the cultural sector, Trevon C Jugmohan has announced his immediate resignation from the board of the National Academy for the Performing Arts (NAPA). The reasons for his departure are not trivial – he cites a perceived undermining of democratic freedoms and the diminishing role of arts in national life.
Jugmohan communicated his concerns to the Minister of Culture and Community Development, Michelle Benjamin, in a letter dated June 1, 2026. His concerns, he emphasizes, did not emerge overnight but have been brewing for some time.
One of the events that deeply saddened Jugmohan, a cultural practitioner himself, was the cancellation of last year’s Independence Day celebrations. He took issue with this decision, given the event’s cultural significance.
Another point of contention was the recent renaming of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and the Arts to the Ministry of Culture and Community Development. The removal of explicit recognition of arts from the ministry’s title troubled Jugmohan. He tried to look beyond the change initially, but found himself unable to ignore a sense of the arts being pushed to the periphery of national life.
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