By Patrick Rahming

The Caribbean Festival of the Arts (CARIFESTA) is a major convention of the Caribbean creative community which currently takes place every two years. There have been 10 such gatherings since 1972, and the eleventh is scheduled to be held in Nassau in August of 2010.

The tenth meeting, held in Guyana, where the first meeting was held in 1972, saw some 3,500 participants from 29 countries, hosted in 40 locations in and around Georgetown, Guyana's capitol city. The scale of the event projected for The Bahamas, both in number of participants and in countries represented, is expected to be larger.

This is the third time The Bahamas has been invited to host the event. Concerns for the difficulty finding accommodations and venues, and for our ability to mount the logistical arrangements may have been reasons for our reluctance in the first two instances, however, we have been given another opportunity to "show off" in 2010. Two countries, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, have hosted twice, and The Bahamas is expected to provide an expert example because of its standing in the tourism world.

What is surprising, however, is the lack of apparent urgency, both by the public and the private sector, in connection with this enormous event. While the effort to host CARIFESTA will be great, there appears to be little appreciation for the benefits of bringing this type of event to our shores. Here, for the record, are a few:

EXPOSURE

As The Bahamas develops, a strong and vibrant group of creative young people look for ways to stretch. The number one way for an artist to develop is exposure to other artists and the mentoring that results from such encounters. This event brings the best creative minds in the region to Nassau, to make them accessible to young Bahamians in performances, exhibitions, symposia and workshops. It also makes global leaders in the arts locally visible and accessible for the 10-day period.

LOCAL BUSINESS

The business opportunities created by this type of event are almost infinite. For example, there will be the need for production services, venue rental and management, hotel, motel and guest house rooms, catering and restaurant services, the manufacture and distribution of logo products, the production of special signage and other forms of public information devices, various forms of transportation, the creation and running of tours and a wide range of daytime and nighttime entertainment. CARICOM, which owns CARIFESTA, has mandated that the host country make the festival economically independent through the use of private sector contracts, licenses and concessions. That means a lot of business over that short period of time.

TOURISM

African Diaspora-inspired festivals have been the largest producers of festival travelers globally in recent years. Of course the best known are the Carnivals of Trinidad and Rio, and Mardi Gras, but festivals in Brooklyn, New York, Caribana in Toronto, Canada and Nottinghill near London in England (which gets over a million people over a weekend) are also very popular. It is the intention of CARICOM that CARIFESTA becomes branded as the largest traveling festival on the planet. The opportunity to generate significant traffic from the Caribbean, North America and Europe would require urgent action, but could have very significant and beneficial results. In any case, CARIFESTA XI in Nassau would be almost the equivalent of a Superbowl in its potential for generating tourism business to Nassau.

INFRASTRUCTURE

The Bahamas is one of the richest countries in the Caribbean, yet our facilities for the presentation of our culture is sadly lacking, even in comparison with some of our poorest neighbors. Our National Cultural groups meet and practice in makeshift accommodations, and there is no major training facility for the sustained development of our youth. Preparation for CARIFESTA XI offers a perfect opportunity to begin a program of infrastructure development that would create facilities to fill that void, and would lead to the stronger presence of our culture in our visitor experience. It should be noted that Guyana, a monetarily poorer country than The Bahamas, was able to mount CARIFESTA X in a year largely because they already had a fully-equipped 1,900-seat theater, a state-of-the-art Conference Center, a 20,000 seat stadium, a number of smaller theaters and a multitude of museums and galleries. Obviously, we are out of time for the creation of much of what would have been possible, but there is still time to salvage the opportunity to strengthen our infrastructure.

This is not an exhaustive list of benefits, but it does suggest that the hosting of CARIFESTA XI could benefit us greatly, both developmentally and economically. Unfortunately, as noted above, the clock is ticking loudly, and those opportunities are evaporating like a pool of alcohol. While there may well be plans afoot behind closed doors, unless the effort moves into the light of private sector involvement, it will soon be too late to derive any of those benefits at all.

* Patrick Rahming is an

architect, writer and musician.