Second City to host Int’l Fine Arts Festival
The Caribbean Community Society Limited (CARICS) is highly anticipating its upcoming International Fine Arts Festival. Selected works will be previewed in an introductory exhibit next March that will expose western Jamaica to Caribbean artists and their works. The preview exhibit, which will be held at Gloucester Avenue, Montego Bay, on March 9, 2019, will be the latest result of CARICS’s contributions to development through promotion of the arts, which the organisation has pursued since 2010.
CEO of CARICS Oniel Cunningham told WESTERN STAR that the exhibit will be aimed at reviving local interest in art displays and festivals.
MUCH-NEEDED EXPOSURE
“Fine-arts festivals provide economic benefits and are also used as major cultural development and entertainment platforms in several locales across the world. Adding this Jamaicanflavoured international fine-arts event is sure to revitalise the local art scene by providing muchneeded exposure and new market potentials to local talents,” said Cunningham.
He said that CARICS will foster socio-economic development through the arts and education by providing scholarships and grants for
Pmarginalised youths.
“This venture will help to promote Jamaica’s rich culture in the fine arts while revitalising interest in Jamaican arts,” Cunningham added.
The exhibit will showcase samples of that art patrons can expect during the festival’s inaugural three-day staging at the Montego Bay Convention Centre between March 12 and 14, 2020.
Anna-Kaye Fowler, CARICS communications officer, said that the exhibit will allow Jamaica’s arts industry to step up to the international stage.
“For decades, the world has rocked to the rhythms of Jamaica, and the exhibit will now bring the world a beautiful platter that is tastefully arranged with other Jamaican arts by way of this Jamaican-flavoured fine-arts event,” said Fowler. ersons in western Jamaica with performing-arts skills will soon get a new platform to showcase them. According to Education Minister Ruel Reid, the Government will be breaking ground for a J$1-billion performing-arts high school in St James early in the 2019-2020 academic year.
“It will bring all the other elements of the academic, but it has a focus where you can actually learn so many things but also use it as career development,” he said. “It is also a life skill because you have professionals that become performing artistes.”
EDUCATIONAL TRANSFORMATION
Reid said that the new school will cater to a student population of approximately 1,200.
“We want to go up to seven years, so we are looking at seven classrooms per year group, so that will take it to 50 classrooms or thereabouts,” he said.
The location of the school is yet to be determined as the Government has two sites under consideration.
“There is a space at Ironshore, or it could be on lands near Cornwall College,” said Reid. “We were hoping we could have broken ground this financial year, but it can’t be until next year because we are doing the whole educational transformation system and then moving to the next phase.”