The activities have been designed to foster increased communication, to create interaction of Caribbean and non-Caribbean audiences at FAU, and to celebrate the region's cultural diversity. Founder of the Trinidad Theater Workshop, Walcott's plays have been produced by the New York Shakespeare Festival and the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. He also is a noted poet having won numerous awards, including the Guinness Award for Poetry and the Queen's Medal for Poetry. He lives in St. Lucia and New York. The FAU Caribbean Celebration is a natural fit for this region and for the capabilities that our College can bring to such an expansive event.
Caribbean communities comprise a large and growing percentage of the region's inhabitants.
The Caribbean represents a multicultural region where hybridity among population groups is most manifest. The region also has much to teach us about diversity and making a society work wherein various ethnic groups live side by side. It is for these reasons, and many others, that we have created this premier event. The Department of Communication and the University Galleries have combined efforts to bring to FAU an eclectic group of well-known filmmakers, artists, writers, academics and public intellectuals to participate in the festival. Joining the visiting scholars for the weeklong event will be Dr. O.R. Dathorne, professor of world literature at the University of Kentucky, who is considered a leading authority on Caribbean studies, especially politics, philosophy, literature and colonialism.