Participants, who will be representing Guyana at Carifesta XI in Suriname, yesterday [Wednesday August 14] paid a courtesy call on Minister of Culture, Youth and Sport Dr. Frank Anthony. Carifesta XI is being staged during the period August 16 to 26.
Carifesta is a multidisciplinary festival that showcases the cultural expressions of peoples of more than 30 countries in the Caribbean Region.
The event will allow contingents to showcase their skills and various cultural pieces in literary arts, arts and craft, music, visual arts, performing arts, fashion and culinary arts.
Minister Anthony highlighted that the members of the contingent are experienced and Guyana is sending the largest. In addition to the 60 persons, there are several organisations that will be coming under the Guyana banner such as the Carnegie School of Home Economics.
“The logistics of moving people around, getting them to the place where they have to perform and so forth is sometimes challenging. Some of that might be mitigated because we are going with our own transportation so it might help,” Minister Anthony said.
He added that most of the events will be in different parts of Suriname so persons will have to be travelling all the time. Persons who will not be participating on certain nights should give support to other Guyanese when they are participating, he urged. There will be a country night and Guyana will be showcasing its performing arts.
“We’re going there to showcase Guyana in all the various aspects of our culture, so we’ll do that, but the other thing too is to learn from others so that we can then come back and have our own fusion and develop our own things out of the experiences that we would have gained,” the Minister highlighted.
All the various heads highlighted and touched on some of the aspects they will be showcasing at the event. Head of the Literary Arts is Al Creighton, Arts and Craft -Denzil Hollingsworth, music- Andrew Tyndall, performing arts – Seeta Shaw Roath, Fashion -Carol Fraser, and Films- Richard Pitman.
The Caribbean Festival of Arts (Carifesta) was initiated by the Heads of Government of the Caribbean Community in 1972 to celebrate the arts, foster a vision of Caribbean unity and to positively advance Caribbean culture regionally and internationally.
Guyana hosted the first Carifesta in 1972 and the tenth event in 2009.
