State of creative industries up for discussion during CARIFESTA XII

Aug 17, 2015 News

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As the days draw nearer for Guyana’s participation in Caribbean Festival (CARIFESTA) XII in Haiti, the state of the nation’s creative industries and those of the Caribbean at large will be up for discussion.

Though CARIFESTA is widely known as a celebration of culture throughout the Caribbean, serious issues are also broached during the festival’s duration in the form of symposia.
And Guyana is more than prepared to deal with these issues and has already prepared a list of topics to bring up during the upcoming festival.
This is according to Al Creighton, one of the principal officials for the Guyana delegation, who explained that the main issue broached will be the state of the creative industries in Guyana and the Region.
According to Creighton, the symposia are an important part of CARIFESTA as they allow important issues governing the arts in the Region to be broached, analysed and presented. In terms of Guyana’s presentation, he shared that the issues raised will have direct impact on this nation in some way.
Speaking on the state of the creative industries, Creighton admitted that the issue had been raised at one other CARIFESTA occasion. He explained that in 2008, when Guyana hosted CARIFESTA X, the very issue had been raised.
“When Guyana hosted CARIFESTA in 2008 one issue that came out was the development of the Caribbean cultured industries and the development of creative industries. The question was asked of whether we were there yet and if we had reached a position where we can say that we have creative industries that are running and that are vibrant and that are profitable and so on,” Creighton said.
However, a number of years later, the issue is still alive and has not yet been settled, Creighton noted. Therefore, he said, the issue needed to be revisited with hopefully more positive outcomes this time around.
“It is a topic that has engaged the CARICOM Secretariat and it is a topic that has engaged some of the other countries across the Region and therefore it becomes an important issue to examine at CARIFESTA. We are prepared to do that; we are prepared to lead a discussion in this respect,” he added.
Narrowing his focus on issues affecting the creative industries, Creighton pinpointed the development of writing and the improvement of theatre and drama as issues plaguing Guyana.
He also added the development of Indian dance and dance forms in general as another issue. All of these issues were deemed by Creighton as under-researched in the Region.
In terms of writing, he said that specific areas such as fiction writing, the tasks presented to writers and what writers have been doing over the years to represent their societies will be analysed during the symposia.
Additionally, he said, theatre and drama have had interesting developments over the years in Guyana and such an outcome would be worth sharing with the Caribbean.
However, while sharing the proposed discussions to be presented by Guyana, Creighton stressed that there will be more issues discussed during the symposia.
“I am not telling you what CARIFESTA will be in terms of the symposia because that is being finalised and put together elsewhere but I am telling you what Guyana is prepared to present and represent at the event,” he clarified.
He added that while the forum will be highly academic, “it is not an ivory tower” and will be looking at real issues that engage creative artists in Guyana and the Caribbean.
Literary participation
Meanwhile, Guyana’s literary works will also be exhibited during the upcoming festival.
Creighton explained that an item for the Guyana delegation will be an exhibition of Guyanese literature. He stressed that this is a major exhibition of Guyanese literature that was put together by the University of Guyana Library.
“The University of Guyana Library has worked for a long time on this. They have exhibits in their possession in the library on campus. They have taken on some of the exhibits from the Guyana Prize for Literature and they have put that exhibition together,” Creighton shared. He said that the exhibition will have different parts with the Guyana Prize accounting for a major part of it.
“It will represent all the winners’ shortlisted books and all the writers who have participated in the Guyana Prize of Literature throughout the history of the prize,” he added.
Additionally, Creighton said that part of the exhibition will focus on “The Guyana classics”. This is a series of publications that has been developed and printed since 2008. Creighton said too that this collection basically attempts to reprint many out-of-print Guyanese publications.
“They [the publications] are extremely important and are icons of Guyanese literature but are out-of-print. Many of these have been reprinted and have been made available through the Guyana Classics. We have important documents like Walter Raleigh’s first publication, which is regarded as the first publication in Guyanese literature even though it was written by an Englishman and not a Guyanese. Some of the important publications that have developed since then are going to be on exhibit,” Creighton said.
CARIFESTA XII kicks off in Haiti this Friday and will run until Sunday August 30.
The Government of Guyana has committed $65M to Guyana’s 80 strong delegation which will include dancers, artists, musicians and dramatists.

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