(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, Guyana) Nobel Laureate, Derek Walcott will be one of the featured guest presenters at CARIFESTA X, the Caribbean’s premier festival, slated for Guyana on 22–31 August, 2008.
Making the announcement on Wednesday 23 April 2008 at the Nineteenth Meeting of the Regional Culture Committee (RCC), Dr Frank Anthony, Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport, Guyana, said Mr Walcott would be delivering the feature address at the Opening Session of the symposium at CARIFESTA X.
He added that the Mr Walcott will also be hosting a master class in writing for young writers during CARIFESTA X.
Born in Castries, Saint Lucia in 1930, Mr Walcott is an internationally acclaimed Playwright, Poet and Art Critic, who earned the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992 for his poetic work, Omeros, which was described as “a poetic oeuvre of great luminosity, sustained by a historical vision, the outcome of a multicultural commitment.” He has also worked as a professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the Boston University in Massachusetts.
Minister Anthony also outlined several activities which were being undertaken in preparation for CARIFESTA X. Chief among them were the upgrading of infrastructure, the restoration of the Theatre Guild and the recruitment of more than two-thousand volunteers to assist with the logistics at the Festival.
Dr Anthony said that to date, several countries from the Caribbean, South America and the Caribbean Disapora had indicated their intention to participate in the Festival.
He assured the meeting that Guyana had “set the stage” for CARIFESTA and every country should be ready to play its part on that cultural stage.
CARIFESTA is the Region’s roving, multidisciplinary, mega arts festival which attracts a wide range of creative artists from various Caribbean and Latin American Countries. Now being hosted under the theme: One Caribbean; One Purpose – Our Culture; Our Life, the Festival is in its tenth staging and is returning to Guyana after thirty-six years. The first festival in 1972 was also hosted by Guyana.
CARIFESTA is one of the priority issues being discussed at the Nineteenth Meeting of the RCC. Other issues include the financing of culture in the Region; the proposed merger of the CARICOM Foundation for Art and Culture with the CARIFORUM Cultural Support Fund; Cultural relations with Latin America and Europe and the establishment of a Regional Task Force on Cultural Industries that will further pave the way for the development of Caribbean Cultural industries.
The three-day meeting was preceded on Tuesday, by the Sixth Meeting of the Interim Festival Directorate (IFD), the transitional body set up by the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) to guide the implementation of the new CARIFESTA Governance Model and to provide expert advice to the Host on the delivery of CARIFESTA. The IFD will present its report to the RCC Meeting on Thursday, 24 April 2008 and the Meeting ends Friday, 25 April 2008.
