Who are we?

As the regional tertiary institution of a heterogeneous population, The University of the West Indies’ is committed to participate fully in the Region’s discovery and development of its intellectual character, confidence and self-respect through a process of researching, analysing, recording and disseminating the history and cultures of the Region. The Centre for Creative & Festival Arts operates as one of the pivotal units in the University, which exposes students, researchers, and academics, and other members of its constituency to the humanizing capacity of participation in the creative and educative arts.

The Centre for Creative and Festival Arts is a Department in the Faculty of Humanities and Education, The UWI, St. Augustine, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. It is one of two such centres in the University system, the other being at Mona, Jamaica. The Centre for Creative and Festival Arts, UWI, St. Augustine is therefore a regional institution serving the needs of the Eastern Caribbean for tertiary level training in the arts.
Established in 1986, through the efforts of Dr. Patricia Ismond, then Head of the Department of English, the Centre seeks to offer instruction in culture and the creative arts at the highest levels of academic, professional and technical accreditation available at / through the University of the West Indies. The courses reflect and promote the region’s multicultural and multi-ethnic heritage.

In 1997 the Centre for Creative & Festival Arts hosted its first International Symposium: Towards 2000 Arts in Education Symposium. The symposium generated much discussion and exposed participants to important and relevant work in the field of arts education. Professor, the Rt. Hon. Rex Nettleford, who was the Keynote Speaker, spoke on “The Artist’s Presence and Caribbean Educational Development” and selected papers were published in a Special Edition of Caribbean Quarterly edited by Rawle Gibbons, Head, CCFA.