Our revels now are ended. These our
actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air,
And like the baseless fabric of this
vision
. . . shall dissolve,
And like this insubstantial pageant
faded
Leave not a rack behind.
(Shakespeare, The Tempest)
According to one of the oft repeated criticisms of the festival, that is the fate of each Carifesta. Whenever the festival is held grand palaces are built, actors traverse the stage, artists of the region meet for an elaborate fete, but when the revels end, the baseless fabric of the vision dissolves, the insubstantial pageantry fades into air, into thin air, and leaves not a rack behind. Large sums of money are wasted on these occasions after which the artists who attend them return home to underdevelopment. Comparable sums of money are not spent on more lasting projects to build and sustain the arts in the years between Carifestas.
Guyana seems determined that this will not happen after Carifesta X. The nation which seized the moment to host the tenth Caribbean Festival of the Arts also took advantage of the opportunity to build into the event a number of projects designed to ensure that something sustainable remains and all will not melt into thin air after the fireworks and pageantry of the closing ceremony fades. There have been intensive campaigns of public awareness, a popularization and involvement of the countryside. previously seen only in Suriname in 2003 and a number of projects pointed at sustainability.
Given the Guyana Government’s approach, the huge sums of money it is willing to spend and its interest in infrastructure building, an important question is, will the nation who invented Carifesta now succeed in re-inventing it, rescuing it from degeneration and making it work for the future with another new model ?
References have been made to a regional festival of creative arts held in 1952, cited as the first of its kind in the Caribbean. However, there has always been at least the spirit of exchanges, development and integrated festivals haunting the region for decades. Very appropriate to the occasion, it was this spirit that moved the employment of a regional theatrical effort to celebrate the formal inauguration of the West indies Federation. This political union among ten West Indian islands came into being in 1958 and the Capital Site, located in Port of Spain, was opened in 1960. Derek Walcott’s play Drums and Colours was directed by Jamaican Noel Vaz with a regional cast.
That same motivation drove the University of the West Indies (UWI, to initiate a dramatic development programme across the Caribbean, led by Sir Philip Sherlock and Errol Hill. There were workshops, instructions, a collection and publication of plays carried out by the Extra Mural Department. Caribbean teams took part in Commonwealth festivals in London and FESTAC in Nigeria. Other efforts included regional unions such as TIE led mainly by Ken Corsbie, and CARIBUSTE.
Carifesta in its present form was suggested and planned by Caribbean artists and writers at two meetings held in Georgetown at the invitation of the Government of the newly independent Guyana. The first Caribbean Conference of Writers and Artists met in 1966 and came up with the idea for a Festival of the Creative Arts. It never materialised. Several of the region’s prominent writers, artists and musicians were again invited to a Writers’ and Artists’ Convention held during the celebration of Guyana’s ascension to Republican status on February 23 1970. This time they discussed detailed plans for Guyana to host a Caribbean Arts Festival in 1971.Detailed notes of the proceedings are recorded by Andrew Salkey in his Georgetown Journal : A Caribbean Writer’s Journey from London via Port of Spain to Georgetown Guyana 1970. (New Beacon Books in 1972.)
The then Prime Minister Forbes Burnham in his address to the opening of the convention charged the artists with finding answers to a series of questions. “What do we mean by the Caribbean?” What may we call the culture or sub-culture of the Caribbean? Is a cultural revolution taking place? What is this ‘cultural revolution’ which we all accept as being necessary? How do we bring it to fruition? These questions are for you to answer; this is your field of expertise”
Salkey’s account reflects the postcolonial theme in the proceedings of the Convention. It was felt that an arts festival every two years would help to fill the need for the recognition, definition and expression of a Caribbean identity; the recognition, articulation and shaping of a Caribbean culture; documentation and exchanges of the arts. These were summed up by Eddie (Kamau) Brathwaite who addressed “the importance of politics and the arts being seen as closely linked cultural manifestations of Caribbean society “. He hoped “that the deliberations would contribute something positive not only to the planning of the forthcoming Caribbean Arts Festival in 1971 but also something valuable and lasting to the culture of the area”.
The convention set out fairly detailed plans which included the following
1. The Caribbean Arts Festival should be representative of the wider multi-lingual region, including the non-English speaking countries
2. A multi-lingual anthology should be published to coincide with the festival
3. The first festival should be 1971 or 1972 in Guyana and thereafter at two-year intervals in different Caribbean countries
4. The CARIFTA Secretariat (now CARICOM) should be asked to assist.
History and Problems
This resulted in the first Carifesta in Guyana in August 1972. Although it took four years before another followed ideology, nationalism, and the art of diplomacy that motivated a succession of countries to come forward as hosts. Jamaica (1976), Cuba (1979), Barbados (1981). Three festivals in five years, a burst of energy that was followed by an 11-year hiatus. the longest fallow period in Carifesta history.
Hurricane Gilbert washed away Jamaica’s offer to host again in 1989, then Trinidad rescued it in 1992. That was Carifesta V. Trinidad stepped up again in 1995 and in 2006. St Kitts played host in 2000 then Suriname in 2003..
Carifesta had become sporadic. It was costly, lacked ownership; it offered no guarantees of economic gain or tourist arrivals; Carifesta had lost its appeal;
In 2003, Caricom, largely through, Dr Carole Maison-Bishop, sought to address Carifesta’s problems and to rejuvenate the event. A symposium titled “Re-Inventing Carifesta” was held in 2003 in Suriname.
Thereafter. a Caricom Task Force on Carifesta was established to create a new model – a kind of Carifesta Ltd. – for the event. The assignment was completed in 2005 and the new model was tabled at Caricom’s COHSOD Ministers meetings and adopted.
Art thrives on irony, and there has been no greater irony than that which followed the approval of the new Carifesta model. Following its approval three regional governments have volunteered to host the festival within the recommended two-year cycle. None, however, have followed the model. The staging of the Festiva continues to depend on the voluntary efforts of one territory or another.
In Carifesta X Guyana has no interest in profit-making. After its own diplomatic carpe diem in announcing its willingness to replace Bahamas as host with only one year to plan, it next addressed itself to a firm domestic policy which is to be served by the festival. This involves first, a rescue act in the spirit of service to Caricom, which seems to have pushed the Bahamas to want to redeem itself by offering to host in 2010. Then it involves a policy of Carifesta in the service of the people of Guyana. There is a determination that the country must derive some lasting benefit from the festival.
One of the strengths of Carifesta 2003 was its popular appeal.. Guyana seeks to emulate or even outdo what happened in Suriname.
The public art project , the child art project, the training programme in technical theatre and the general decentralization of the event appear designed to ensure popular participation. Moreover, it seeks to ensure that Carifesta provides an opportunity for the creation of new dramatic works and new works in the visual arts. This policy also accounted for one of the most impressive public courses of training in several areas of technical theatre ever mounted in Guyana, in which nearly 800 persons were trained.
Some attention is also being paid to another area that was specifically addressed in the 1970 convention as an aim of the festival. That is, according to Salkey’s account, the resolution that “a multi-lingual anthology should be published to coincide with the festival”. Carifesta X has planned at least two publications and if this is achieved it will make Guyana the producer of more such publications than any other country. To date, however, none has equaled the number of volumes generated by Carifesta I in 1972 when five pieces of work came off the press. The list follows:
5. Andrew Salkey, Georgetown Journal, London: New Beacon Books, 1972.
6. Kaie, No. 8, December, 1971, (ed) Celeste Dolphin, Georgetown: National History and Arts Council.
7. A J Seymour, New Writing in the Caribbean: Carifesta ’72, Georgetown.
8. Kaie No 11, August 1973, (ed) Celeste Dolphin, Georgetown: National History and Arts Council.
9. Syble Douglas (ed), Drums of Guyana, Georgetown, 1972.
In many ways, therefore, Guyana is returning to the past in the way it is achieving some of the goals set in 1970 as well as in this preference for the old model of volunteer host bearing the full burden of administration and funding. The main difference here is in housing. Guyana built Festival City and accommodated all visitors free of charge, Jamaica did likewise in 1976, using the university campus and Cuba followed suit in 1979.
The hospitality in 2008 does not include that, but Guyana has firmly decided it will seek no financial earnings from Carifesta.
That has been the trend in Suriname and Trinidad, while the Bahamas also chose to volunteer under the old dispensation rather than adopt the New Model. This choice seems attractive to governments because of the freedom of control it gives them to shape the festival as they wish. It also enlarges the nation in the eyes of others and thus works as a strategy of gainful foreign policy. That is why the Bahamas, after its cancellation of Carifesta X in Nassau because of internal domestic politics, has been so eager to seek redemption by offering to host Number XI.
There are two ‘monuments’ of the first event in Georgetown today – Festival City and Carifesta Avenue. No Carifesta has imposed itself upon the local popular culture as Number 8 in Suriname. Guyana now seeks to redesign it with its own new model, guided by a conscious domestic policy after the regional coup in foreign policy it gained by picking up the baton dropped so suddenly by Nassau in 2007.
Al Creighton
