The 34th Oistins Fish Festival will take on a new dimension when the 2011 Easter weekend extravanga begins tomorrow.
Hundreds are expected to flock the newly-created Heritage Village, where native craftwork, some lost in decades of social transition, will be restored, displayed and demonstrated.
Budding artistes, including the Barbados Community College’s (BCC) NIFCA Award-winning Pan Ensemble and Showtime, a five-member band mainly from BCC students and graduates, will join Kareen Clarke, Dancin’ Africa, and the Eastland Steel Orchestra on stage at Heritage Village for the opening entertainment programme.
Minister of Agriculture Dr David Estwick will deliver the feature address at the official opening ceremony tomorrow and also declare open the new Heritage Village.
Apart from Heritage Village, the three-day programme will also include activities at the festival village to be set up in the area known as Granny’s Car Park.
It will feature a wide-range of music and entertainment by such artistes and groups as Trevor Eastmond, Mikey Dread and Peter Ram, Full Force Band, Haynesville Drummers and the live-wire street dancers Adrenalin of Oistins.
And local designers, who have already stamped their brands on local, regional and British catwalks, will parade their latest creations in a Cassandra Mottley co-ordinated Fashions Forever show on the final day of the three-day fiesta.
The celebrated St Leonard’s Secondary School Boys’ Choir and the interdenominational St Michael-based Celestial Voices – swiftly becoming a household name in Barbados and North America – will be featured in a two-hour matinee recital at the Oistins Bay Garden on Easter Sunday.
This event will be a precursor to the regular Sunday evening Gospel Fest.
Apart from the other events such as swimming, net-throwing, fish-boning and dolphin-skinning competitions, the open air folk festival will cater to every age and interest, and for the first time will include a “national dolphin-skinning competition”, allowing entrants from other fishing ports the opportunity to match their skills in a competition once thought to be reserved for Oistins fisherfolk.
