Minister of Culture, Stephen Lashley, has called on participants in CARIFESTA to utilize the regional festival to develop long lasting cultural relationships between their respective countries.

Stressing that Caribbean countries needed to invest in the festival during its two week run and beyond, the Minister highlighted the need for participating countries to strive for long standing connections, adding that such is the purpose of the proposed Barbados/Haiti Cultural Agreement.

???We are very focused and keen on taking this beyond CARIFESTA. I think the legacy of CARIFESTA has to be about how we can concretise the outputs of this very important festival into a number of gains for each country???.

As the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Youth continues to explore the possibility of a cultural agreement with Haiti, Minister Lashley alluded to potential involvement of Barbadian historians.

???The Haitian Ministry of Culture has asked me to look at the possibility of having some of our historians and persons who are involved with that work to share their expertise with Haiti and that is something I will be looking into as well.?????Barbados is scheduled to host CARIFESTA XIII in 2017.

jamal.weekes@barbados.gov.bb

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