Thousands enjoy Settlers

Thousands of revellers, including unregistered ones, participated in the Settlers: The West Coast Experience.

Band members playing mas on the streets of Holetown in the wee hours of Saturday morning.

Some of the tourists who lined the route of the festival. (Pictures by Sharon Harding.)

Mon, February 18, 2013 - 12:06 AM

Settlers: The West Coast Experience, which attracted hundreds of paid revellers and thousands of unregistered ones, also involved more tourists this year compared with previous years.

And according to Toni Thorne, managing director of the three-year-old festival, she was constantly working to make it bigger and better each year.

“It keeps growing all the time and we try all the time to evolve the product,” she told the DAILY NATION ahead of the almost five-hour jump up.

“We are still trying to maintain what we would have originally wanted, which is to make people in the younger demographic learn more about their culture but in a very fun-loving way." (MM)

Please read the full story in today’s DAILY NATION, or in the eNATION edition.

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Posted by Frank Husbands 3 months, 4 weeks ago: The Holetown festival needed a jolt as it was on life support being a dying festival and some thought a "jump up" would bring it back to life.Mind you here’s another dancing in the streets festival on the Island, I have lost count as to how many times a year we now have mini carnivals.
A carnival type float parade that caters to the gay and lesbian international community the likes of a Gay parade I think is the best way forward for this festival.
Imagine at this time of the year several cruise ships that cater to the Gay community descend on Barbados for this annual festival docking and staying in Barbados for the length of the seven day festival.Almost 50 thousand niche visitors to our shores who end their trip here by participating in a Gay float parade.
Sodomy can remain a violation on our statue books and they don't have to marry each other here; they can at least however propose while on the Island.
This Island needs some serious strategies to lure much needed foreign exchange to our island as we have nothing nowadays to export to earn hard currencies.Encouraging a bunch of local people to "wuk up on it" and go down the road every other month will come to naught.