‘Mr Killer’ to perform @ VG festival 2014
Of the $100k that has been committed to the Virgin Gorda Festival activities, Chairman of the BVI Festival Committee Mr Marvin Blyden has assured that they would be given $50K before the end of the week to cement their arrangements. “We are giving the same amount like last year. Before, they use to get $60k like East End and Carrot Bay but as of last year I defended the position of giving an additional $40k,” Mr Blyden told this news site.
The Virgin Gorda committee and their overseer body had their most recent meeting at Virgin Gorda last evening March 12, 2014 immediately after which this news site caught up with both Mr Blyden and Ms Flax separately. Ms Flax has confirmed also that they committee has its eyes on two big international artists, ‘Onyan and Burning Flames’ and ‘Mr Killer’ out of Grenada.
Righting the wrongs
“We are looking at those two and others out of St Thomas and St Croix but we are paying a lot of attention on our locals, yes international artistes is a go but the locals are priority,” said Ms Flax.
Ms Flax said that she has accepted the position as Chairperson at a time when the general community had lost every confidence in the managing and executing of activities for the Virgin Gorda Festival but said that though very young in age, with the backing of a very supportive committee they are working diligently on ‘righting the wrongs’ of the previous Chairman.
“No one wants to do anything for us without getting cash in their hand because of their bad experiences last year and so we are in that position where we have to get monies in advance before we can say definitely yes to this and yes to that. Even with the local and international artistes we can only, at this point, say we are hoping to…,” said Ms Flax.
She also noted that they are currently working with two tentative dates for the official launch ceremony and the confirmation of this also hinges on the timely release of finances. “We are planning an Easter warm-up activity but we have a big surprise which I cannot let out the bag now for launch,” she said.
She also said that they would be keen on pulling in as much cash as possible from the various events, noting that the pageants are usually the pullers.
VG not being sidelined by BVIF&FC
Several persons including on Mr Jerry B. Lettsome had expressed concern that the BVIF&FC has been pumping a lot of finances and organization for the official launch of the Tortola Diamond Jubilee emancipation ceremony while VG’s festival which is just about five weeks away hasn’t seen a dollar to get their planning off the ground.
“I have been keeping a close eye on how Blyden them has been going heels on with plans for their big launch which is next week and every time I ask members of the VG committee about their plans they kept saying they haven’t gotten any money yet to do anything and I think that is bad management,” said Mr Lettsome.
However Mr Blyden has said that this was far from the truth as they had already committed $100k for the VG Festival. “The thing is that we were not going to just throw out monies like that, the various sub-committee heads had to come before us and effectively defend their budgets before any money is released and that is what they did here tonight,” stated Mr Blyden.
He added, “It would be totally wrong for anyone to say that we are giving the Tortola launch activity priority over the VG Festival because that is not the case.”
Jr. alone had information in his head
Mr Blyden while being keen on not bashing the previous chairperson Mr Rupert Vanterpool Jr admitted that there were several shortcomings with the execution of the VG festivals last year. “The biggest problem with the previous Chairman was communication. It was his first year, he made mistakes that I am confident he would not have repeated this year had he stayed on,” said Mr Blyden.
He said that for last year, there was not a single time one could have called on other key committee members for information as they were shut out by Mr Vanterpool, “I cannot say that about this present committee, everyone is integrally involved and I am sure it started while he was still chair of the committee, so I know he would have corrected a lot of his mistakes this year.”
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34 Responses to “‘Mr Killer’ to perform @ VG festival 2014”
Whilst I applaud the young persons on the VG Committee for volunteering their time and efforts, perhaps, older, more experienced and perhaps, more conservative, persons should also be involved to strike a balance between youthful energy and ideas and a sense of decency and decorum. We would not wish to give the impression that we have lost our way.