The Commonwealth Arts Festival of 1965 was an important moment of postimperial reengagement. Over three weeks, Britain hosted visual artists, musicians, dancers, poets, and writers representing national cultures, who together presented a diverse Commonwealth assembled in terms of egalitarian multiculturalism. This article examines the investments of individual nations in participating in this festival to argue for the transnational production of multiculturalism at the end of empire. As a postimperial phenomenon, Commonwealth multiculturalism depended on the legibility of distinct national cultures assembled through an equitable framework. Governments sponsored representative cultural forms in response to domestic political circumstances and international economic needs, and against the imperial aesthetic hierarchies of the past. Examining the diverse interests assembled through the festival is essential to understanding the legacies of imperial power for more seemingly democratic frameworks of difference.
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