(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, greater Georgetown, Guyana) Nobel Laureate the Honourable Derek Walcott OCC will participate in a Symposium scheduled for Sunday 24 August as part of the Tenth Caribbean Festival of the Arts (CARIFESTA X) which opens in Guyana on Friday 22 August.
The Symposium, which will be held at the Guyana Convention Centre, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, has been referred to as one of the most dynamic events of CARIFESTA by Guyana’s Culture, Youth and Sport Minister, the Hon Dr Frank Anthony. Mr Walcott will open the Symposium and it will be closed by Professor Rex Nettleford OCC. Participants include Caribbean and international literary giants such as David Dabydeen, Al Creighton, Edward Baugh, Cynthia McLeod, Dr Ian McDonald and Dr Kenneth Ramchand.
Some of the topics to be explored include: “Mekkin Change: Art and Artists in the Caribbean” with Trinidad and Tobago’s Alim Hosein and Makemba Kunle, The Bahamas’ Maxwell Taylor, Cuba’s Yolanda Wood and the Cayman Islands’ Natalie Coleman; “Are We There Yet?” Defining and Redefining Our Cultural Industries with CARICOM Secretariat’s Dr Hilary Brown, Trinidad and Tobago’s Sharon Le Gall; Anguilla’s Davon Carty, Jamaica’s Lennie Salmon and Saint Lucia’s Adrian Augier, and A Caribbean Philosophy: The Role of Ideas in the Making of A Caribbean Nation with Dr Rupert Roopnarine, Professor Nettleford, Kim Johnson, Miguel Neneve and Dr Anthony Martin.
This symposium will be preceded by an Edutainment Symposium for youth on 23 August which will feature four Caribbean countries that will analyse the theme Edutainment – a concept, a strategy.
According to Dr Anthony, it is anticipated that the Symposia will spawn a practical plan of action that could chart the way forward for the development of Caribbean Cultural industries.
Highlight of day two of CARIFESTA X will be the official opening of the Grand Market on Saturday 23 August at 1:00 p.m. This is located on the north eastern border of the capital, Georgetown, at the National Exhibition Site, Sophia. Saturday will be the first of eight days and nights of family-oriented craft show, trade fair, culinary festival, fashion runway and country festivals. At the site, the more than thirty participating countries, including all fifteen Member States and three of the Associate Members of the Community, will demonstrate what is unique to their country and assert their differences, even while celebrating a predominance of similarities in the hope that one country at the end of the eight days will cop the award for the best display.
Running concurrently with the Grand Market at differing venues will be eight signal events – one of the recently introduced elements of the new CARIFESTA strategic plan. The newly restored historic Theatre Guild and the National Culture Centre – a legacy of CARIFESTA I and arguably the largest theatre of its kind in the Caribbean with a seating capacity of 2000 – will be two very popular venues for several of these signal events in the performing arts. Productions will include the Jamaican Play River Bottom featuring the inimitable Jamaican comedian Oliver Samuels; Pluft, a children’s play from Brazil; Trinidad and Tobago’s National Steel Orchestra and Anguilla’s Afro-Caribbean Dance Production.
The CARIFESTA Youth Village, hosted at the 57-acre national park located on the north of the capital, Georgetown, will include components such as drama, dance and a symposium to be held by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Apart from hosting the Youth Village, the National Park will also host the CARIFESTA Book Festival and a Muslim Festival, the latter scheduled for Sunday 24 August beginning at 4:00pm. The festival will feature various aspects of Islamic culture.
Poetry recitals, story-telling, book launching and creative writing workshops will be hosted at the massive 55 feet Amerindian style hut named Umana Yana – an Amerindian word which means meeting place – a popular tourist attraction in Georgetown. Community Festivals will be sited in ten regions of Guyana and will see performances from several countries. The official opening for the Community festivals will be at the historic 1972 CARIFESTA Village now called Festival City.
The Super concerts – four of them – will punctuate the Festival, with two to be staged on the 24th and 25th and another two on the 29th and 30th.
Then the curtain will come down on the closing ceremony on the evening of 31 August 2008 at the Providence Stadium.
