The fortunes of the art and craft contingent at the August 17th – 27th Caribbean Festival of Arts (CARIFESTA) in Barbados may not have been much more than modest but renowned Guyanese Potter, Nicholas Young believes that in circumstances where learning has been an incremental experience for Guyanese creative artists some positives would have been taken away from this year’s experience.
If the local craft industry is truly a reflection of a critical element of the Guyanese culture, it is, as well, an industry, from which our creative people expect to make a living. That has always been an issue. If a relative few have been able to make a commercial success of their work, others, the vast majority, cannot look to their creative skills for what we in Guyana term ‘a living.’
Accordingly, as much as the local craft contingent that journeyed to Barbados for CARIFESTA would have served as Ambassadors for Guyanese culture, the commercial opportunity promised by what might have been expected of a gathering of truly Caribbean people would have been seen as significant. Accordingly, there would have been some measure of investment in creating eye-catching ‘pieces’ for Barbados with the hope that admiration for the work on show would have been transformed into some measure of patronage.
