Dominica’s Kaz Kweyol Productions Ltd in collaboration with the Alwin Bully Foundation will be hosting the first ever Dominica Artists in Residence Programme at the Old Mill Cultural Centre, Canefield, Dominica from Tuesday 7th to Thursday 16th November, 2023.
The Artists in Residence Programme is a nine-day training exercise organized by Kaz Kweyol Productions Ltd of Dominica in collaboration with the Alwin Bully Foundation with funding from the Creative Caribbean – managed by UNESCO, CARICOM and the University of the West Indies (UWI) with funding from ACP-EU. The Residency Programme is aimed primarily at emphasizing ways to preserve Dominica’s rich and vibrant traditional masquerade forms, including the Sennse, Bann Movė, and Souswel Souwi, and exploring ways of enhancing the techniques and methods for building a sustainable traditional carnival industry.
The Residency will be divided in various segments to allow for sharing of experiences, transfer of knowledge and an opportunity to examine practical solutions for preserving the tradition and building a new ethos for the future development of the art-form as an important aspect of the Dominican and Caribbean carnival sector.
The workshop will be facilitated by a team of leading exponents of the traditional masquerade forms from Trinidad & Tobago, Martinique and New Orleans along with local experts, in mask and costume building. The facilitators are expected to lead the workshop through a series of interventions focusing on the transfer of knowledge and skills in mask-making, costume building and design techniques for traditional carnival costumes, working on practical solutions to building authentic masquerade forms. The workshop will also explore and expose participants to the use of other materials and innovative ways to incorporate traditional forms in the modern/ contemporary carnival space and to better monetize these forms for the benefit of mas makers and carnival stakeholders.
The workshop is scheduled to run from 2:30 p.m. to 6:30 pm each day, except on Saturday 11th November (workshop will be from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.), while Sunday 12th November is a free day for participants. A half-day conference to discuss the “Historical, Philosophical and Theoretical Underpinnings for the Preservation of the Traditional Costume in Dominica and the Caribbean” will be held on Friday 10th November, between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m
This is an excellent initiative.
I hope that it can be eventually extended to include other art forms – the visual arts being a prime contender.