Both Sides of The Coin: The Story of The Central Bank of Barbados 1972-2017

Chapter 5: Some Notable Developments 187 the Bank won a gold medal for one of its visual productions, It Matters Fiscally , an educational television programme that was named Best TV/web series at the Barbados Visual Media Awards, beating out two other series. The Lecture Programme Over time, the Bank developed a programme of lectures that catered to a variety of publics. The Sir Winston Scott Memorial Lecture was the oldest and the flagship, but two other series have held their own. The Sir Winston Scott Memorial Lecture This lecture, started in 1976 to honour the memory of the late, first native governor-general of Barbados, was proposed by Dr. Blackman at a Board meeting just after Sir Winston’s death in August 1976. The Board approved an annual sum of $10,000 for this event and agreed that lecturers and their spouses would be invited to Barbados at the Bank’s expense. The first lecture, delivered by Dr. Ernst Schumacher on November 29, 1976, in the Conference Centre at the CDB, was entitled Independence and Economic Development . Dr. Schumacher was the chairman of Intermediate Technology Group Limited and author of the bestseller Small is Beautiful . The lecturers have all been at the top of their respective fields. During the early years, they included Sir William Hawthorne, professor of Applied Thermodynamics at the University of Cambridge (1977), Dr. Jean- Pierre Levy, head of the Ocean Economics and Technology Branch of the Department of International Economic and Social Affairs at the United Nations (1979), Lieutenant-General Thomas Stafford, a former United States astronaut (1981), and the first Barbadian, Professor Sir Kenneth Stuart, medical adviser to the Commonwealth Secretariat (1983). Within a short period, the Lecture became the premier event on the Bank’s public relations agenda. At the end of each lecture there was an interesting, occasionally controversial, question-and-answer period. Speakers also held