BASSETERRE, St. Kitts - WITH the month of December fast approaching, many residents in St. Kitts and Nevis are gearing up for the annual Carnival activities to celebrate Sugar Mas 42.
Though major announcements or promotional activities have yet to come on stream, Carnival Chairman Sylvester Anthony has claimed that preparations for the festivities are “far advanced”.
“Preparations are far advanced for Carnival. We have an exciting calendar of activities for this year and that calendar I expect to be confirmed in the next few days or so and we will be ready to launch Carnival in a relatively short space of time.”
He added that the promotional events are expected to start over the coming days and they are seeking to officially launch this year’s Carnival with a street parade on November 23.
“The promotional events will be starting in a few days. The television ads are already being developed and should role out pretty shortly. We expect that the official opening of Carnival will take place on the 23rd of November.
“The intention on that day is to have our first street parade. The opening this time won’t take the traditional format. Instead, we are adding a parade on that day called a T-shirt Mas; we had planned it last year and we hope it will take place on that day.”
Anthony also stated that they are seeking to place more emphasis on the street activities as well as promoting the Soca Monarch.
“We intended to put more emphasis on streets this year as we did last year, as well as to put a greater focus on the Soca Monarch. We think that this is an area we will spend a little more effort and time on.
“A number of the promotional events will focus on the soca artistes, so we will be investing some time and effort in promoting the Soca Monarch this year.”
He further stated that that registration is open for all Carnival events but registration for the National Queen Pageant would close on Monday (Oct. 28).
“Registration started two weeks ago for our National Queen Pageant and the registration ends on the 28th (October). So there is still sometime for the females interested in participating in the pageant. We are encouraging all the young ladies out there who are interested to register.
“Registration is open for all the other disciplines of Carnival. We have not set a deadline for them as yet but we will assess the registration by this weekend to determine how much more time we need to give people to register.”
The Carnival Chairman expressed his excitement for the upcoming annual event.
“What I really want to indicate is to ask people to gear themselves up. We are having a lot of shows. We will be charging for those shows. We are encouraging people to come out and spend some money with Carnival. Some of the traditional events are going to be on as well as a lot of after party events.
“We will have a few street parades. We will be adding new shows and we will be having soca promotion events. We have a basket full of events from the 23rd to January 2nd. We have set our prize-giving for January 11.
“So we have put together what we believe to be a very good plan together. Our various sub-committees are working very hard to plan and we hope we can execute good product. What we need now is for the mass players, the revellers, the bands and the artistes to do their part so that we can have an exciting Sugar Mas 42.”
