It’s been decided! After months of planning, the 11th International Carnival Conference will take place in Trinidad from Wednesday 6 to Friday 8 March 2025. The 6th is Ash Wednesday, by the way, so Carnival will certainly be fresh in delegates’ minds!
The last conference, in December 2023, was held in Ghana. It was the first to take place outside the UK and proved a great success, so expectations are high for this edition, which will be held jointly with the University of Trinidad & Tobago (UTT).
The theme is Famalay and subtitled “Carnival Interconnections and Reconnections; Cultural Cadence: Steelpan, Calypso and Mas and the Global Diaspora Connection”. The main title comes from the 2019 collaboration of that name between Machel Montano, Skinny Fabulous and Bunji Garlin. As the conference flyer notes, ‘Famalay’ was chosen because “carnival artists, scholars and enthusiasts belong to a massive, multicultural, multiethnic and multinational extended family”.
The conference will explore the cultural ties between diasporic communities and their respective homelands. Speakers will consider “our shared history, practices and world views” – as they relate to Carnival, of course.
The organisers are keen to hear from anyone who wants to be part of this exciting venture by presenting a scholarly, artistic or a performance-based interpretation of the Carnival Family theme. Presentations can be oral or in the form of a poster, and demonstrations of techniques are welcome too.
Some possible sub-themes include, but are not limited to:
- Carnival, Caribbean identity, diaspora
- Shared ancestry/ies
- Carnival as (re)memory
- Body as the site of knowledge (dance and movement)
- Music is in the DNA – Caribbean music on the world stage
- Carnival in the 21st century and beyond
If you want to participate, submit your 150-300-word abstract to Steelpan Conference Submissions by Friday 8 November. Conference registration (opens 1 Jan 2025) is a modest US$50 ($30 for students).
To find out more, contact: Kela Francis ([email protected]) on UTT and Trinidad & Tobago; Haroun Shah ([email protected]) on diasporic queries; and Laila Shah ([email protected]) on publication in the International Journal of the Carnival Arts.
