The many moods of Marcia Hextall, Executive Director of the JCDC. - Carlington Wilmot /Freelance Photographer 'I LIKE things that people say can't be done,' said Marcia Hextall.
Marcia Hextall could barely get the words out.
She was sharing one of her memorable moments during the well-received Jamaica 40 celebrations, but the Executive Director of the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission (JCDC) was laughing so hard her eyes closed, and her laughter stifled the story.
When she eventually got it out it was the story about the uncontrollable laughter of a young man in Yallahs, St. Thomas, who went down on bended knees, because he was so tickled by one of the festival performances.
It happened on the St. Thomas leg of the Festival Train a flatbed that had been travelling across the island with the winning performers from the various JCDC competitions. One of the performances, 'Church Chuckles', a piece about a woman who had been converted to Christianity had got good response at every stop, but in Yallahs one young man "went down on his knees and down on the ground in uncontrollable laughter." He was laughing so much that other people were pointing at him and laughing, sending laughter belting through the crowd.
For Hextall, these are the little things that make her proud of the recent Jamaica 40 celebrations. For years the JCDC has been trying to get Jamaicans to reclaim the Festival and Independence celebrations, she says. Hextall says she knew early on that this year would've been a big success judging from the parish and zone events, watching the responses of the audiences and talking to people.
As boss of the cultural agency, Hextall reckons that her role is not limited to boardrooms and "official events". Whatever, wherever, whenever, if it's a JCDC event, she's there to see how things are going and to gauge the audience response.
"She's always there," one JCDC staff member told Flair. "She'll drive herself to wherever the event is, find a seat not in the front row and just blend in with the crowd. If we are feeding the performers, she'll be there with everybody else, sharing food. She's a hands-on kind of lady," he said.
Hextall says her approach is nothing extraordinary. "My view of my role is really to guide the process and you can't guide unless you get some of that feedback on the ground. Dialogue is very important to the process and that's why I watch and listen and talk to the people involved. It's a good way to be informed about what I need to do."
Long office hours and attendance at various events meant that "sometimes I'd just have enough time to go home and bathe and come back, but everybody else at JCDC was doing the same thing."
"JCDC is one of the few places I've worked where, when you leave at 7 o'clock in the evening several cars are still here and staff members are busy working on five and six activities, despite their specific assignments."
Many of those late nights were spent agonising over the budget and logistics, especially for the float parade and the Festival Train. The float had not been done for years and there were doubts about whether they could pull it off. As for the Festival Train, they were at first unsure of how to co-ordinate two trains one in the east, the other in the west each taking five days to make it through its allotted parishes.
"Security was a big issue," she said. "We had people's children and very expensive equipment." However, with the help of Synergy Security, the agency pulled it off.
"I like things that people say can't be done," Hextall explains passionately.
"I like to start things. A number of the projects I've worked on before coming to the JCDC, I was the first to start. There's a special skill which you need to do that and I just like that," she says.
"There's a Jamaican saying that you should, 'Settle for what yuh get, until yuh get what yuh want'," she continues "but I don't believe in that. I think you must go for what you want. I don't have a fear of failure so I'll take the risk and if it doesn't work, I'll say 'well, now we know that doesn't work.' But I have a duty to seize opportunities."
That's the philosophy this mother of one has applied to her life and that's the logic she used three years ago when she accepted her present job. She had spent most of her life working in social development, co-ordinating programmes such as The UNDP's LIFE programme. The way she sees it, cultural development is a vehicle for social development.
CULTURAL ARENA
Her friend of 22 years, Dawn White, is not surprised at Hextall's success in the cultural arena.
"She's a very bright woman, very analytical and very flexible and she loves Jamaica and Jamaican music with a passion."
That passion and love for Jamaica is still very clear despite several negative experiences such as an incident in which her husband was shot some years ago. There was a shooting incident on one leg of the Festival Train. "But the performers insisted that we continue, the audience too wanted us to keep going, so went on."
There was also an incident in June when a gun man tried to steal a bus that had dropped off some students at one of the JCDC competitions in Mandeville. The gunman fired shots at the driver and also hit down two students with the bus.
Still, Hextall insists that there's nobody like us.
The work is not over and Hextall is busy tying up loose ends. But she paused for a few minutes to reflect on the record levels of audiences and the renewed sense of patriotism that flowed out of the Jamaica 40 celebrations. "I just felt that all we had worked for and invested in... all the extra hours and the times we had left our families was worth it. It was life a rebirth and we were able to see it."
