The Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency (Caribbean Ex­port) has an­nounced that 11 par­tic­i­pants from nine coun­tries will join the De­sign Caribbean stand at the Cal­abash Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val from May 30 to June 1.

The stand, which will show­case the work of some of the re­gion's finest crafts­men, will be a key stand­ing fea­ture of the fes­ti­val which is sched­uled to take place at the pic­turesque Jake's Ho­tel, Vil­las and Spa in Trea­sure Beach, St Eliz­a­beth, Ja­maica, a re­lease said. The Cal­abash Fes­ti­val not on­ly fea­tures some of the most pro­lif­ic and revered writ­ers from the Caribbean and around the world but has con­tin­u­ous­ly pro­vid­ed an out­let for high­ly-skilled crafts­men and women to show­case and sell their prod­ucts in on a high­ly vis­i­ble plat­form to its ex­po­nen­tial­ly in­creas­ing au­di­ence.

Caribbean Ex­port said in a re­lease the fes­ti­val will be ex­pand­ing its of­fer­ing by play­ing host to De­sign Caribbean with the brands Belzeb In­cor­po­rat­ed from Grena­da; Very Vani­ta and Avark from Bar­ba­dos; Rain­for­est Pot­tery and Arawak Leather of Guyana; Hands in Clay and Reve Jew­ellery and Ac­ces­sories of Ja­maica; Kay Ex­pres­sions from Be­lize; St Lu­cian - De­signs by Na­dia and Hait­ian Cre­ations Dorees, all be­ing part of the De­sign Caribbean pavil­ion.

"We are thrilled not on­ly by the in­valu­able sup­port from and col­lab­o­ra­tion with Caribbean Ex­port, but the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ful­ly show­case re­gion­al ar­ti­sans along­side lo­cal craft and fash­ion. The De­sign Caribbean pavil­ion will be a fit­ting ad­di­tion to the Glob­al­ishus of­fer­ing at Cal­abash," said Jus­tine Hen­zell, pro­duc­er of the Cal­abash In­ter­na­tion­al Lit­er­ary Fes­ti­val.

"The Caribbean's artistes pos­sess an over­whelm­ing wealth of tal­ent mak­ing it an ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult de­lib­er­a­tion process when we can on­ly sup­port a lim­it­ed num­ber.

"This par­tic­u­lar stag­ing of De­sign Caribbean pro­vides the ar­ti­sans with ex­po­sure to an in­ter­na­tion­al au­di­ence and al­so much wel­comed me­dia at­ten­tion," com­ment­ed Pamela Coke-Hamil­ton, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor at the Caribbean Ex­port De­vel­op­ment Agency.

De­sign Caribbean at Cal­abash pro­vides an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the ar­ti­sans to en­gage di­rect­ly with their tar­get au­di­ences and al­lows for artists to be rep­re­sent­ed un­der one um­brel­la but to mar­ket them­selves in­di­vid­u­al­ly as brands. The con­sumer gains a com­pre­hen­sive sense of the va­ri­ety of of­fer­ings avail­able in the re­gion and the op­por­tu­ni­ty to delve more deeply in­to their par­tic­u­lar ar­eas of in­ter­est.

�2 More in­for­ma­tion about Caribbean Ex­port can be found at www.carib-ex­port.com.

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