Well done!

Festival Designer of the Year Kevin Small’s Fifth Element Mas walked away with the lion’s share of prizes at Saturday’s Crop Over Awards Ceremony. The band leader and his team took home fifteen prizes at the end of the event held at the Daphne Joseph Hackett Theatre, Queen’s Park.

The National Cultural Foundation (NCF) presented more than 100 prizes to top performers and contributors of this year’s festival. Band leaders, masqueraders, senior and junior calypsonians, visual artists and volunteers were all recognised for the roles they played in staging a successful festival.

Awardees, along with specially invited guests, were treated to an evening reminiscent of the major moments of the season. There were live performances by Junior Monarchs Quon, Shontae and The Mighty Bit Bit; Calypso Monarch Classic, Tune of the Crop winner Leadpipe and a video presentation of Mikey’s winning Soca Monarch performance since he was overseas.

Video clips of all major events for the festival starting with the Bajaramas to the climax on Grand Kadooment Day were also shown.

Minister of Creative Economy, Culture and Sport John King congratulated the awardees and thanked corporate Barbados for their continued support of the festival.

“A celebration of this nature at the end of every season is paramount as we take a moment to acknowledge, reward and laud your commitment to this festival and the aspiring journeys along the roads to success. We applaud you…” he said.

Chairman of the NCF Board Glyne Harrison who played on this year’s slogan Crop Over Correct said it was a successful season since there were a number of areas in which they got it “correct”.

“By the end of the festival, we were pleased to say we got the buy-in from young to old, saying they were Crop Over Correct … We also got our coverage correct this year and we were able to take our stories and our news to the wider world. It’s something that we need to continue to do because Crop Over is bigger than Barbados,” the chairman said. (IMC)