The Tribune

By ALESHA CADET

Tribune Features Reporter

acadet@tribunemedia.net

WITH ONLY a few more days to go, the largest international festival to hit the Bahamas is gearing up for its 19th edition.

Since its reinstatement in 2009, the International Cultural Festival (ICF) has known to attract up to 25,000 visitors each year. New features, country booths and stage presentations are added to the festival every year, as well as activities to entertain the entire family.

It’s all going down this Saturday and Sunday from 10am to 6pm at the Botanical Gardens.

Janet Johnson, ICF chairperson, said this United Nations (UN) oriented event was initially created to celebrate the blending of cultures that exist here in the Bahamas and to show how peacefully they all co-exist.

At the festival, in addition to the Bahamian booths, there will be booths from countries like Guyana, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, Jamaica, Peru, Panama, to name a few.

“This festival has grown exponentially and the Bank of the Bahamas has been our primary sponsor. They are a sponsor through providing us the use and the facility of festival dollars which has differentiated our festival from all others. We are self-sustaining and we are also the largest, and we are able to measure all of these things through the wristbands that we issue when people come through the gates, which obviously correlates with the tabs that comes with the wristbands,” said Ms Johnson.

She said this international signature event generates about $300,000 gross per year and that has been fairly consistent since she took over as chairman six years ago.

“The membership is robust and this year we have quite a number of Bahamian booths. What is also great about this festival is the people in charge of the booths have to decorate themselves from a cultural heritage perspective because it is a competition that they have to enter,” said Ms Johnson.

According to the ICF’s website, the festival also provides a global platform for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to encourage foreign countries to consider staging food and cultural weeks as well as host more trade missions to the Bahamas. Strategically, this makes the Bahamas a far more interesting and sophisticated place to live and visit by broadening and deepening the vacation experience and quality of life that is available here.

Ms Johnson said the ICF is a wonderful event and she thinks they have something to offer everyone who attends.

“It has been going on for so long and we have got people who have been involved for many years. People visit from as far as the outer islands to come to the festival. I think people attend because it is an opportunity to see and sample food and beverages from all around the world. They enjoy the booth competitions and having a window into people’s cultural heritage,” she said.

Ms Johnson said events like the ICF are important because they show how different cultures can live together peacefully.

As for the entertainment programme, there will be several cultural performances on the main stage with people dancing in their national costumes.

She said the festival has fostered interest in foreign cultures in adults while also offering an educational outing for children, especially if they can get a hold of the ICF souvenir booklet. The booklets that are left from the festival are given to various schools in the Bahamas.

“All year long we are fussing about the immigrants and how they tax our welfare system, but at the Cultural Festival we all come together and they are just another country. When the Haitian band go on stage, people dance and enjoy them. It is two days out of the year when you put your guard down and you come in your national colours,” said Ms Johnson.