CAIRFESTA Brand Becoming More Uniformed

In a quest to make one of the Region’s most iconic cultural events, the Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) more standardised, a permanent logo has been designed and approved for the Festival.

The approval was given by Ministers of Culture and Officials at the recently-concluded meeting of the Council for Human and Social Development (COHSOD) in Georgetown, Guyana.

Traditionally, each CARIFESTA host country was required to design a logo to be used in their branding of the Festival, which meant that for each hosting, there was a different logo. With this new logo, every CARIFESTA subsequent to the fourteenth staging this year, will use the new design. The aim is to give the Community’s mega cultural Festival a more uniformed brand.

The logo for the first CARIFESTA was “a dark hand rising, grasping the sun, depicting the skills and aspirations of the tropical man with talent untold”, a symbol of the Caribbean people defining themselves and articulating their aspirations.

The next hosting of the event will be in Trinidad and Tobago, 15-26 August 2019, under the theme ‘Connect, Share, Invest’.

Dr. the Hon. Nyan Gadsby-Dolly, Minister of Community Development, Culture and the Arts of Trinidad and Tobago, who is spearheading the planning of the Festival, gave an update to the Council regarding the preparations. She explained that activities were well underway and provided the Meeting with a calendar of events – a first this early in the planning of CARIFESTA. The calendar can be accessed at the CARIFESTA website www.carifesta.net.

Regarding other matters that were discussed, the Meeting was apprised of the work of a number of regional and international partner agencies in support of culture and the creative industries. Two areas considered to be critical to the development of creative industries in CARICOM: a proposal for the establishment of the Caribbean Creative Industries Management Unit (CCIMU) developed by Caribbean Export; and the establishment of national and regional registries of artists and cultural workers were also discussed.

The CCIMU is intended to provide business and other support services to the sector to build the export capacity of artists and cultural entrepreneurs. The national registries and the regional registry are important tools to complement the free movement provision for artists and cultural workers under the CSME and enable greater market access to the European Union as Contractual Service Suppliers.

The matter of Reparations for Native Genocide and Slavery was also ventilated and the Council was updated on the progress made to date in advancing the claim; the achievements realised and the challenges faced by national committees and the regional CARICOM Reparations Commission in carrying out their mandates.

The Council decided that another meeting will be held via video conference to further discuss these matters as well as a Draft Regional Development Strategy and Action Plan for the Cultural Industries in CARICOM.