BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC)–The 15th edition of the Caribbean Festival of Arts (Carifesta) got underway here in Barbados on Friday with the organisers promising global excellence in keeping with the theme of the 10-day event.

The region’s premier festival is being held under the theme “Caribbean Roots, Global Excellence” and festival director, Carol Roberts told the opening ceremony at Queen’s Park that “we gather here not only as neighbours…but were we have come from and where we are going today.

“It is about legacy what we are building for the future,” she added.

The 10-day event will feature at least 366 events including for the first time, performances from the African continent. At least 34 countries are participating in the event, including 300 young people from across the Caribbean.

A number of regional and international heads of state or government representatives, including Rwanda, the Netherlands, Colombia, Venezuela, Guinea Bissau, St Vincent and the Grenadines, St Kitts and Nevis, The Bahamas, Antigua and Barbuda, Cayman Islands, Haiti and the Netherlands Antilles are in attendance.

Host Prime Minister Mia Mottley said Carifesta XV “must leave a legacy, a legacy in the minds of our young people, a legacy with respect to the electronic marketplace that Barbados is committed to creating for those of you who are practitioners of Caribbean civilisation”.

She said this is important because “it is not only enough for your stories to go to the rest of the region through broadcast and social media today, but we want it to last so that the world understands our contribution to humanising the world, to seeing people, to hearing people, to feeling people and to recognising that fairness and justice must find itself at the core of our world today.

“The Caribbean represents the best example of it and will continue to be able to promulgate to the rest of the world at this very difficult time whether it is as a result of wars and conflict, geo-political difficulties or regrettably that caused Bermuda to almost not to be here, the climate crisis and the hurricane and the floods of the region”.

Mottley said that the Caribbean has a resilient population and if we do so “with a pep in our step and if we do so with a lithe in our voice and if we do so appreciating the lyrics and the masquerade and above all else, the food of this region and the people of this region and the spirit of this region, then I tell you my friends in spite of all that we face today we can be optimistic of the future of this Caribbean region”.

She told the opening ceremony that people are always the Caribbean’s greatest resource and “while we may have challenges, we have it within us to rise above it in a way that those who came before rose above it with less that we have today”.

She disclosed that Barbados had on Friday signed an agreement with the Trinidad-based Banyan Productions to purchase the historical record that captures the digital archives of the last 40 years of the Caribbean.

“We in Barbados are committed to making those archives available to all Caribbean people because at the end of the day, whether it is going to watch (Barbadian) George Lamming give the eulogy of Maurice Bishop (former prime minister of Grenada) or the 40 tapes that we have of Carifesta 1981…or interviews of the northern into the southern Caribbean, those archives will give the opportunity to young people to build upon this and to create even more for us as a people”.

Caribbean Community (Caricom) Secretary General, Dr Carla Barnett told the opening ceremony that Carifesta is being staged for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic and “what a significant moment for us who have assembled in Barbados”.

She said apart from literary, culinary arts and storytelling, Carifesta is “an affirmation of simple but…our history.

She said regional leaders have long determined that culture is integral to the socio-economic development of the region, adding “Carifesta is integral to the overall strategy to develop the region’s culture.

She said it is an “enduring testament to the boundless creation of the Caribbean”.