Caribbean Festival of Arts
annual festival promoting arts in the Caribbean
Caribbean Festival of Arts, commonly known as CARIFESTA, is a bi-annual festival for promoting arts of the Caribbean with a different country hosting the event each year. It was started to provide a venue to "depict the life of the people of the Region, their heroes, morals, myths, traditions, beliefs, creativity and ways of expression" by fostering a sense of Caribbean unity, and motivating artists by showing the best of their home country. It began under the auspices of Guyana's then President Forbes Burnham in 1972, who was inspired by other singular arts festivals in the region.
Events
According to the CARICOM Organisation, CARIFESTA aims to:
depict the life of the people of the region - their heroes, morale, myth, traditions, beliefs, creativeness, ways of expression.
show the similarities and the differences of the people of the Caribbean and Latin America
create a climate in which art can flourish so that artists would be encouraged to return to their homeland.
awaken a regional identity in Literature.
stimulate and unite the cultural movement throughout the region.
Performing arts
The festival includes both a cultural opening and closing ceremony.
Presentations range from elaborate musical productions to comedy, fantasy, ritual, history, folk plays and legend. Some of the artists from the first CARIFESTA include Conjunto Folklorico Nacionale of Cuba, the Ol'Higue and Baccos of Guyana, Shango dancers from Trinidad, Shac Shac musicians from Dominica.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3744071. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1972.
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This entry incorporates text from “Caribbean Festival of Arts” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.