How Tobago Heritage Festival was born

The Tobago Heritage Festival is one of the marquee events on the calendar, showcasing the island's rich cultural history in two weeks of events.

Owing to the covid19 pandemic, the festival has been held virtually over the last two years.

This year's edition was launched on July 28 and the Tobago Festivals Commission has sought to remind people about the roots of the festival.

The commission hosted a webinar on Monday titled From the Beginning discussing how the festival was born.

Among the panellists were cultural stakeholders such as George Stanley Beard, Annette Alfred, Bindley Benjamin and Josanne Leonard. Tobago Festivals CEO John Arnold moderated the discussion on the island's heritage, the early villages and their involvement in culture, the concept behind a heritage festival and the challenges faced.

Arnold said it is important to record a history of the event.

“It holds our narratives, it maintains cultural traditions, informs the environment, records our ancestry heritage perspective – our pain and our healing,” Arnold said.

Beard, addressing how the festival came about, said he entered the Tobago House of Assembly in 1984 and in 1986, he was made Secretary with the responsibility for the Environment and Tourism.

“We sat and we shared the idea that we could actually introduce an integrated form of cultural tourism as the purpose of developing a tourism product to market Tobago, and that’s where the Tobago Heritage Festival.

"The concept which basically was in my head from 1972, was born.”

He said $1,000 was allocated by the THA in 1987 for the inaugural year.

Beard said the biggest concern at that time was ensuring that the replication of the island’s history and culture was as authentic as it could get.

“We had to call on a diverse number of persons who would have had the expertise and the experience to be able to form the committee. We pulled the people who would have had the exposure and the experiences in various artforms.”

Leonard said she was contacted by Beard who explained the plans of the event. She recalled walking throughout Port of Spain soliciting support for the festival. She was able to obtain $63,000 – cash and kind – towards the event.

“It really was pounding the pavement and selling a belief system – that this island called Tobago has so much to offer by way of its rich cultural history and content and it has all these possibilities," Leonard said,

She said it was always the intention to incorporate universities, archaeologists and other groups to tell Tobago's story fully.

Benjamin said in the trial year, the villages included Moriah, Les Coteaux, Charlotteville and Roxborough.

“Being a cultural enthusiast from a tender age, I knew all the entertainers, dancers...I knew people in the villages, so we knew exactly what we wanted. We actually chose the villages that we know that were strong in their beliefs and certain things, and we were out there working night and day – it was a fun thing.”

Alfred said she was assigned as the village co-ordinator – a role she took with zeal.

She said after only starting with five villages in 1987, year after year, more villages wanted to participate.

“We used to have real exciting festival launches; we had some wonderful times with heritage, bringing in every year another village and another event. I must say one event that I always liked was the courtship code when we went down to Colluden – those days were really beautiful times.”

The webinars continue with Evolution, the second part of the series, on August 16. This will be followed by Village Talk and De Young People Chat on August 23 and 30, respectively. Other activities include a visual art presentation called Expo Art Tobago on August 13 and 20. The Miss Tobago Heritage Personality closes the festival on September 11.