Local Vibes
June 18, 2004
No Carnival action next year

Next Carnival season one constituency will be out of Carnival action. Instead of the regular Carnival activities the South Windward Carnival committee is making plans to host an early festival in February.
According to head of the committee, Ishmel Shott, the initial idea behind the shift in festivity is to pay homage to the traditional end-of-crop season for the arrowroot production. {{more}}
Dubbed “To go round tail”, Shott said: “I had an insight that there are to many rural carnivals. If we have one in Windward, Leeward, and the Grenadines it would save money and attract more sponsors, and would generally be bigger and better.”
With an aim of getting more participants in the National Carnival festival, Shott said that the February move would have a greater impact on rural involvement in national Carnival.
“Once our Queen is selected in the February competition she gets a chance to contest for the Miss SVG title, also our Mas costumes will participate in the national competition,” Shott pointed out.
He said that the whole event is about the arrowroot festival. In preparation for next year’s early celebrations the chairman hinted that the committee will seek assistance from Mas builders, pan men and other cultural artisans to incorporate a cultural blend to reincarnate the arrowroot end-of-crop festival in February.