August 1st Emancipation Day Street Fair for Heritage Square

Tuesday, August 1, Emancipation Day would go down as a special event in St. Vincent and the Grenadines.

That day would see a Street Fair at Heritage Square in Capital City Kingstown. It would be dubbed “Spirit of a people.” The fair marks part of Emancipation Month activities scheduled for August 1 to 31.{{more}}

However, the action bubbles from Sunday, July 31 when Project Promotions in collaboration with the Earlene Horne Foundation hosts an Emancipation Watch. This is design to herald the dawn of the freedom day.

The Street Fair is slated to run from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., at which a number of items indigenous to this nation will be displayed.

Culture Minister René Baptiste was upbeat about the event when she launched the programme at the Cruise Ship Berth last Tuesday morning.

Cultural officers Ann Marie Venner, and Ken Isles as well as Permanent Secretary Andreas Wickham supported Baptiste.

While the Street Fair is going on, the Department of Libraries would be staging an exhibition at the Old Public Library, opposite to Heritage Square.

The activities will vary to include drumming, dance, and poetry at the Calliaqua Culture Pot on Saturday, August 5, Friday 11 and 18.

The focus shifts to the radio waves with a programme carded for Sunday August 6. That would set the stage for the airing of the Radio Play “Life with Mable”, written by Bobby Fraser.

Vincentian and former Test cricketer Alfie Roberts, regarded as one of the nation’s cultural icons, would be the centrepiece of an exhibition dubbed “Let Alfie Roberts speak” scheduled for the Peace Memorial Hall August 18.

The Breadfruit, incorporated as part of this country’s National Dish, would be given the spotlight with the Breadfruit Festival slated for Richland Park Primary School, Sunday, August 13, and again in the North Leeward town of Chateaubelair Saturday, August 19.

Besides the planned programme of activities designed by the Cultural Department, business houses and other freedom-loving outfits will use the month of August as a springboard for the display of things African. Outfits reminiscent of African culture and heritage are to be highlighted during the month, and the occasion is marked by a manifestation of conscious African pedigree.

Thursday, August 17, would also be a day of commemoration. That time followers of the Rastafari tradition would be in the spotlight. They would be paying tribute to Pan Africanist Marcus Mosiah Garvey. He was born August 17, 1887 and died in June 1940. He is revered as one of Africa’s greatest sons. He prophesied the emergence of African’s King Haile Selassie I the First.