The Anguilla Summer Festival is on, having commenced on Thursday, July 28, with a series of carnival activities at Landsome Bowl Cultural Centre, on the streets in the Valley, boat-racing and other events over the ensuing holiday week.

Some of the costumes made for the Summer Festival

The various events are expected to attract large numbers of people from across the island and from various parts of the Caribbean and beyond the region. It is clearly the biggest time of revelry in Anguilla for the year.

Chairman of the Anguilla Tourist Board and of the Carnival Committee, John Benjamin, has praised the members of his working group for their hard preparatory work over the past three months. “We are pretty confident that things will go well, especially in light of the artistes we are bringing into Anguilla,” he told The Anguillian. “If we have good weather, and LIAT and American Airlines performed as they have promised, then we should have a good carnival. In addition, with the good behaviour from all our youngsters and parties concerned, we should have an enjoyable carnival so that all visitors can come to Anguilla, feel secure and want to come back again.

“The whole purpose of the Summer Festival is to promote Anguilla and for us to highlight our culture, and for people to come in from a tourism aspect and see the beauty of Anguilla and return again and again. Most of the inns and medium to lower income properties are all booked out. We have made sure that everybody gets a little bit of the action. If the carnival can be kept going on a sustainable level as the Government is planning to do, we can see the Summer Festival as probably our biggest festival all year round. After all it should be, as we also celebrate Emancipation Day. Freedom from slavery and oppression should be our biggest reason for celebration.”

Mr. Benjamin went on: “It is really a Caribbean thing. We have people coming in from Dominica, St. Kitts, St. Maarten as well as from St. Vincent making the costumes. One of the biggest contingencies is coming from Trinidad. It is really a nice feeling to see how we can involve our Caribbean brothers and sisters in our carnival. In fact the Ministry of Culture in Trinidad is sending down some forty performers to revel with us on j’ouvert morning and celebrate Emancipation Day with us. So we are looking forward to them enjoying our celebrations with us this year. It is also a pleasure for all of our hard-working people here to see others enjoying themselves. It is a great pleasure for all of us.”

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