B.T.B. to Host Village Arts & Crafts Expo
The third annual Village Arts and Crafts Expo organized by the Belize Tourism Board will be held this Saturday at the Memorial Park in Belize City. Over a hundred and seventy artisans and craftsmen from across the jewel will be featured in the expo that will showcase their creative designs to local and international visitors, hoteliers and more. According to Destination Planning and Development Coordinator, Clive Myers, arts and craft expo allows for the small entrepreneurs from over forty-four communities countrywide to network with stakeholders in the tourism industry.
Clive Myers, Destination Planning & Development Coordinator, B.T.B.
Clive Myers
“The third annual village arts and craft expo takes place this Saturday, November first, from nine a.m. to five p.m. at the Memorial Park in Belize City. This year we have approximately a hundred and seventy-five artisans participating from a definitive number of forty-four villages from across the country. Of course like expo one and two we have an array, a variety of different arts and craft that will be out at the Memorial Park. These include slay carvings, paintings, pottery, wood craft; you name it, it will be at the park. We have food and drinks for sale. Definitely Grace Kennedy will be out there. We have Pen Cayetano and Super Furia Cultural Band that will be out there performing throughout the day. So the Village Arts and Craft Expo is definitely a family event. We encourage the family to come out, enjoy what we have to offer; encourage and build that relationship with our small producers that are involved in the arts and craft. And as an organization, definitely the expo is a medium for us to create that cohesion link between the craft sector and tourism. So we encourage the family to come out on Saturday nine a.m. at Memorial Park and just come out, have fun and buy your early Christmas gifts. Since this is the third year, we have participants who were involved in the first two expos and we have new existing artisans that will be taking part in the expo this Saturday. The scheme of how we go about having these artisans participate in village expo is through a destination assessment. The umbrella project at the Belize Tourism Board is the Village Outreach Program where the Destination Planning Department goes out to these communities and do a quick survey of what they have to offer and inclusive of that is the survey of the amount of artisans and what they are producing and if it is authentically Belize. From there, the selection process takes place of assessing the craft and then from there they get approved to be a part of the Village Expo.”
Several of the artisans under the Unique Belize brand of the Making Tourism Benefit Communities Adjacent to Archeological Sites Project will also be featured at the Village Arts and Craft Expo.
