About Us

Since 1994, the Department of Creative & Festival Arts (DCFA) has embarked upon a programme of public education, entitled Arts-in-Action (AiA). Essentially, this programme seeks to extend the work and mission of the DCFA into communities and institutions throughout, in the first instance, Trinidad and Tobago, and subsequently throughout the Caribbean region.

The philosophical basis of its work has been that the arts have an indispensable role to play in the process of social and attitudinal change and development. Today, Arts-in-Action is recognized as the leading Applied Creative Arts company in the Caribbean Region. We have coined the term Applied Creative Arts (borrowing from Applied Theatre) to explain the ways in which we specialize in using creative and performing arts disciplines (e.g. theatre, dance, music, visual arts, storytelling, spoken-word, Carnival Arts etc.) in developing educational content for a wide range of audiences. From primary and secondary school interventions to community workshops and corporate boardrooms, AiA uses arts-based techniques to treat with issues ranging from Change Management to HIV AIDS Awareness to Mathematics!

As a self-funded, not-for-profit unit of the Department of Creative and Festival Arts, UWI, Arts-in-Action draws on the expertise of its members, who are all facilitators (students and graduates) of creative arts programmes at UWI. Arts-in-Action also draws on the vast knowledge and skills base that its unique position as an entity within the UWI affords it.

Arts-in-Action has spent the last 17 years honing this methodology and developing thereby a distinctly Caribbean style, using the arts in education and development. To date AiA has completed well over 3000 interactive performance workshops across the country, the Caribbean, the USA and UK, dealing with pertinent societal issues to over half a million participants. Arts-in-Action has also successfully transferred this highly effective methodology to other media, e.g. radio and television, with the production of entertaining and educational programmes such as “YouToO!” – a tourism education video for children which was produced by Tourism and Industrial Development Company (TIDCO); and “The Rough Season” – a Caribbean audio soap opera on hurricane disaster preparedness produced for Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), American Cancer Society) ACS, et al, to name but two.

Along the way, Arts-in-Action has also earned a number of significant awards, accolades and partnerships. Some of these are listed below.

• XI FITA ’98 Festival Internationale di Teatro Aruba, Best Production
• BP AMOCO Leaders Award 1999: Environmental Category
• CANADA FUND Award for HIV/AIDS Awareness, 2000-2003
• 2001 UWI Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence
• 2002 Trinidad Express Newspapers Merit Award to Youth Group or Organization
• 2002-03 Tidy T&T Outstanding Project: Environmental Literary Category
• 2003 Green Leaf Award – Environmental Management Authority (EMA)
• 2003 bpTT Spirit of Community Awards – The Environment Category
• 2003 bpTT Spirit of Community Awards – Arts & Culture Category
• 2004 Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) Youth / Master Card Entrepreneurship Award (Culture)
• 2004 bpTT Spirit of Community Awards – Youth in Education Category
• 2005 UNDP Small Grants Programme Award for DRAMATHICS
• 2007 Salzburg Fellows – Salzburg Seminars 446
• 2008 UNICEF grant for ‘Apprentice Theatre’ (done in partnership with the National Commission for UNESCO)
• 2008 Arts-in-Action’s Wordsmiths participates in Brave New Voices international youth poetry festival, Washington, DC
• 2009 “Break the Silence” Child Sexual Abuse and HIV/AIDS project for IGDS
• 2010 Ministry of Science Technology and Tertiary Education grant for Life Skills television soap opera