Charlestown, Nevis (May 29, 2007)
Chairman of the St. James Festival Committee Mr. Pearlivan Wilkin hailed Winfest 2K7 as a success. The Whit weekend community festival with the theme “Celebrating with Action Windward Fest 2007″, was the first in what is expected to be an annual parish activity.
“In my opinion it went generally well. It was incident free and I think it was a very good weekend. The festival brought people together and stimulated economic activity, they were two of the five main objectives we wanted to meet this year,” he told the Department of Information on Tuesday May 29, 2007.
The festival was sponsored by telecommunications provider (Chippie) UTS Cariglobe and was held under the patronage of Mr. Nathan “Supper” Jeffers a distinguished senior citizen of the St. James Parish.
According to Mr. Wilkin, the Committee hoped to achieve more strategic goals to revitalise and penetrate the Parish’s dying culture and heritage and to provide potential contestants for Nevis’ annual Culturama Festival in successive festivals.
Meantime, at Winfest’s official opening ceremony at the White Hall Basketball Court on Friday May 25, 2007, Minister of Culture the Hon. Hensley Daniel noted that the Nevis Island Administration (NIA), had taken a decision to organise the parish festivals to give persons additional opportunities for self expression.
“The thinking is that the community festivals must provide the spirit for Culturama and if the people are accustom to share in the culture diversity of their respective parishes then we can expect a greater showpiece during Culturama and that is one of the reasons, the aim being to strengthen the engagement and involvement in Culture at the community level so that we can have van improved Culturama throughout the year,” he said.