The expressive arts have long been a valued part of the Caribbean culture. In the last two to three decades in particular, there has been growing belief that the arts are integral to the development of personal and national identity. Academics and politicians see the arts as tools for nation building, even if at times the processes needed to develop artistic sensibilities and artistic enterprises are given less attention and financial support than they warrant. Rex Nettleford, one of the Caribbean’s erudite postcolonial theorists, who has long argued that the arts provide a medium for the empowerment of the Caribbean people, sees the arts as giving “avenues for the harmony of inner and outer space—the surest guarantee of psychic and social stability which are critical to nation building” (Nettleford 2006, 10).