Culture Minister:

In addressing the gathering of Caribbean people at the launch of Carifesta at Brian Lara Promenade on Monday, Culture Minister Joan Yuille-Williams spoke about achieving Caribbean unity.

“Participants from the Caribbean experience will be featured in a ‘Parade of Nations’ offering the viewing public an artistic perspective on how Caribbean unity and integration can be achieved,” she said.

She noted that ever since its inception in Guyana several years ago, the festival has been hailed as a magnificent explosion of Caribbean arts and culture. “Over the years, it has further grown in significance, saluting at each staging, the ancestral voices that even today, continue to enliven, inspire and enrich us as a people,” she said.

Carifesta can be said to be a laboratory for further development of the arts in the region: Exploring various possibilities for the development of the arts; Exposing the peoples of the region to each other’s culture through creative activities; Developing our regional culture as well as its aesthetic forms.

Minister Williams continued to say that this festival will once again witness sterling performances and exhibitions from around the region and the Caribbean diaspora. An Interim festival directorate comprising local and regional representatives (including officials of the Caricom Secretariat) has been established to perform the over sighting and policy direction.

Minister Williams also said that this symposia will be the platform for performing artistes and intellectuals to talk with each other and to share with the general public, discussion on matters of widespread interest. A strong “youth” element will be inserted into this year’s programming.

This year marks the third occasion in which TT hosted Carifesta. This country hosted this cultural event in 1992 and again in 1995.