[dropcap]S[/dropcap]enator Fortuna Belrose, the Minister within the Ministry of Culture and Local Government, was pleased to meet with the media to offer some feedback the day after the final event of the Roots & Soul Festival which ran from Friday 16 to Sunday 18 June, 2017. She expressed her overall satisfaction: “I think we had a very successful weekend in terms of the Roots & Soul event. We had great performances and, from all indications, the show was very good on the Saturday. On Sunday we had a larger crowd despite the weather. Saint Lucians turned out and we really want to thank them for that.“
Presently, the inaugural Soleil activities are still avenues for learning and improvement. However, Minister Belrose noted that this courageous venture of the Events Company and the Saint Lucian Government will have many advantages and opportunities in the near future, not only for our artists and culture but also for general revenue and employment.
“We’re piloting; it’s about testing the systems because what we want by year two of this event is for us to be exploding,” she enthused. In the meantime she can attest that the refined Saint Lucian product will encourage improvement to planning and local participation. “The acts that we had, they all performed very well,” she said. “That’s what we want. You want to put your local artists on a stage with international artists and when you do that, they develop the confidence, our citizenry develops the confidence, so that when these artists decide to put on a show outside of these events it will be patronized because people can tell and know the quality that they deliver.”
Belrose anticipates the public’s opinions, feedback and input as statistics to relate to for future advancement as well. According to the minister, the changes in concept are meant to benefit Saint Lucians. “We want the public to criticize, giving us the negative and the positive, so we can help shape this. At the end of the day it’s for our country,”
Belrose also believes that cultivating the arts is a genuine key to that kind of success. Next on the agenda for Soleil Saint Lucia Summer Festival is Saint Lucia Carnival, which officially opened last week Wednesday. All events and updates are available on the Soleil website.
