Government is making millions of dollars available to help build out a heritage tourism niche in the coming months.
As she made the announcement in her Budget speech on Tuesday, Prime Minister Mia Mottley urged tourism stakeholders to capitalise on the island’s rich history relating to the slave trade.
Noting that 570 slaves were buried at the Newton Slave Burial Ground heritage site in Christ Church, she expressed disappointment that Barbados has not been able to take advantage of this.
“It is ironic that this country has not made an industry out of the heritage industry, but this government is here to change that,” she declared.
The Prime Minister said her administration has already set aside $15 million at the Barbados Tourism Investment Inc. (BTII) and another $15 million would follow, as digitisation of the records at the Archive Department continues.
She explained that Government has met with conservationists to see how best the records that date back as far as 1635 can be preserved and used as part of the heritage tourism push to share the story about the transatlantic slave trade.
Mottley said she has set a deadline of “under three years” for the records to be digitised, adding that she will also be looking to the global community for financial support of the conservation and heritage tourism efforts.
“We cannot do it by ourselves but we are going to give it the push off and then we are going to start talking to the people across the globe who help put us in this position and how they need to help us out,” she said.
The Prime Minister contended that she would not allow the country to lose the transatlantic slave records, believed to be the second highest amount in the English-speaking world behind the United Kingdom.
Without giving details, Mottley also indicated that once a monument is erected and the archives digitised, it was her administration’s intention to encourage a build-out of the heritage tourism niche.
“We have hired a consortium to help us raise what will be a large sum of money internationally, and the public will hear the details of that as we go forward, but our responsibility is to take care of the archive and build a monument,” she said.
During her presentation, Mottley also announced that come 2025, the Vision 2020 We Gatherin’ campaign, which was designed to encourage Barbadians from the diaspora to reconnect with their Bajan roots, would be revived.
The initiative, which started in January 2020 and was intended to run for a full year with an event taking place in a different parish each month and major celebrations in the month of November, came to a halt in March 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Noting that Barbados will have four years, starting 2025, “in which heritage, reflection, identity and reparation will be at the centre of discussions”, given the 400th anniversary of several significant events including the first modern landing by the British in Barbados in 1625 and the establishment of Bridgetown in 1628, Mottley said it was an opportune time to restart the We Gatherin’ initiative.
She said serving early notice of its return should provide enough time for Barbadians overseas to plan their visits.
“Let Bajans from all corners of the earth gather again in 2025, parish by parish, so that collectively in December of 2025 the whole of us will come back together,” the Prime Minister declared.
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