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Bumper crop
8/7/2012
Crop Over 2012 has been a resounding success!
This was expressed by the Minister of Family, Culture, Sports and Youth, Stephen Lashley, during the Barbados Tourism Authority (BTA) annual Crop Over press conference, recently.
He revealed that record patronage was achieved this year at the MQI /Banks/Lime Pic-O-De-Crop competition, an increase in numbers at the Scotiabank Junior Monarch competition and more than 22 000 were on the road for the Roberts Manufacturing Foreday Morning Jam.
According to the Minister, this year’s festival featured a diverse display of cultural expression ranging from visual arts, calypso and cuisine, to the literary arts and heritage.
“We can boast that Crop Over is more than a carnival. It really shows so much of what Barbados stands for and the history of Barbadians,” he remarked.
Lashley highlighted that the Central Bank Visual Arts Festival, in association with chief sponsor Republic Bank, provided a very remarkable festival within a festival.
“The development of this art therefore could prove to be an experience useful to the marketing of Barbados. To ensure the productivity of visual artists we had implemented a number of incentives for Crop Over 2012. Raising the amount of prize money to reward winners in the visual arts competition had the effect of causing an increase in the number of entries and indeed in the workmanship and creativity as we saw this year,” he noted.
In addition, to the new events on the Crop Over calendar like the Culinary Showcase, Lashley lauded the First Citizens’ Bridgetown by Night Heritage Tour which drew hundreds of persons into the historic city, and also noted that the Crop Over Heritage Lecture and Tour, in association with the Insurance Corporation of Barbados, was extremely well received.
The Minister also took the opportunity to congratulate the BTA for leading the charge with the responsibility of marketing Crop Over in the overseas market.
“Because of this invaluable contribution, we have seen persons come to Barbados to experience the festival. A major source for foreign exchange, Crop Over is to us a drawing card for international and regional tourists coming into our country and certainly the efforts of the BTA must be commended.” (TL)
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