BRENT PIN­HEIRO.

Pro­duc­er

brent.pin­heiro@guardian.co.tt

As the cur­tains come down on Car­ifes­ta XV, Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley wants its lega­cy to live on, and she’s will­ing to put her mon­ey where her mouth is.

At the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny for the 10-day fes­ti­val at the Richard Stoute Am­phithe­atre, Mot­t­ley an­nounced a se­ries of short- and long-term ini­tia­tives aimed at pre­serv­ing Caribbean cul­ture and art for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. Among them, the es­tab­lish­ment of a per­ma­nent Car­ifes­ta House where the Car­ifes­ta Vil­lage and Grand Mar­ket cur­rent­ly sit at Wa­ter­ford, St. Michael, and a web­site to al­low ven­dors reg­is­tered at the Grand Mar­ket to sell their prod­ucts on­line for a year for free—and spon­sored by the Bar­ba­dos gov­ern­ment.

In an­nounc­ing these ini­tia­tives, Mot­t­ley said:

“Car­ifes­ta must not be a sin­gle event. It must be able to cast a strong lega­cy. And if we talk about the or­ange econ­o­my and we talk about the cre­ative in­dus­tries, then our peo­ple must ben­e­fit from it.”

She took a mo­ment to ad­dress the Caribbean del­e­ga­tions and called on them to re­claim their des­tiny.

"I pray tonight that in this au­di­ence, there will be oth­ers who will be sim­i­lar­ly in­spired as I was in 1981 to be able to claim our Caribbean civil­i­sa­tion as our own and to build it up, be­cause this is the civil­i­sa­tion that can hu­man­ise the whole world. Be­cause we know what it is to suf­fer. We know what it is to care. We know what it is to work to­geth­er," Mot­t­ley said.

This year’s edi­tion of the Caribbean Fes­ti­val of Arts (Car­ifes­ta) was held in Bar­ba­dos from Au­gust 22–31. Over the 10 days, more than 300 events were held at venues across the is­land.

Fes­ti­val Di­rec­tor and CEO of the Na­tion­al Cul­tur­al Foun­da­tion, Car­ol Roberts, gave an emo­tion­al speech, de­scrib­ing what the fes­ti­val meant for the re­gion.

“Car­ifes­ta XV gave us a most pre­cious mo­ment to breathe deep. We ex­haled the pent-up fears, anx­i­eties, and trau­mas that have test­ed our re­solve, and we in­haled in­spi­ra­tion, mo­ti­va­tion, beau­ty, and joy, as on­ly the arts and cul­ture can do,” she said.

“It touched each of us in un­told ways, and we are all the bet­ter for it,” Roberts as­sert­ed. “We were not just cel­e­brat­ing cul­ture. We were ad­vo­cat­ing for peace, tol­er­ance, and sus­tain­able change.”

Bar­ba­dos now hands over the reins to a yet-to-be-named coun­try, which will host Car­ifes­ta XVI.