Revamped Pirates Festival stretched to three months
(CNS): The annual Pirates Festival is undergoing another change and instead of a condensed version as was the case in 2021, the plan this year is to bring back the Heritage Days where each district hosts its own event at two-week intervals, beginning in September. The new three-month festival starts on 3 September with a kick-off event. Then on 17 September, the first Heritage Day events will be held in East End. The pirates are due to land on 12 November, and the main events take place the following weekend.
The goal is to support Cayman’s recovering tourism sector and promote local vendors, entrepreneurs and artists, according to officials.
At a press conference last week to announce the revamped festivities, culture Minister Bernie Bush, a former director of the festival, said the new extended festival aimed to preserve the best aspects of previous Pirates Weeks while developing new elements for both residents and tourists. Expanding the party to three months will give people the chance to attend a number of events that will highlight and celebrate Caymanian culture
“This is the start of a process to continuously be built on year to year,” said Bush.”We are looking forward to seeing local crafts, local musicians and certainly an endless spread of our local dishes. Reintroducing the District Heritage Days will also give each district the platform to showcase their uniqueness and we want every single aspect of our three islands to be highlighted,” he added.
Promising that more events will be added to the schedule in the weeks ahead, he made a direct appeal for volunteers and sponsors.
“To our past sponsors of Pirates Week, although the government is injecting significant funding, we welcome and want this to be a public-private partnership. The team will be reaching out to past sponsors and seeking new sponsors to make this Pirates Fest as good, if not better, than previous years,” Bush said.
Tourism Minister Kenneth Bryan said his ministry was always looking for ways to add new and exciting experiences that help to level out the peaks and valleys between the high and low tourist season. “Pirates Festivities provides lots of activities that can appeal to visitors and attract them to our shores,” he said, adding that his ministry and its agencies were working with overseas vendors to create enticing packages around the campaign.
“The Ministry of Culture has advised that approximately 160 pirates are already confirmed
to visit our shores in mid-November. The Pirates Week Office is also seeing an uptick in inquiries,
from families wanting to book their vacations, around the dates that the Pirates Week activities
are being held,” he added.
Ministry of Youth, Sports, Culture and Heritage (MYSCH) Events Manager Ventisha Conolly said there would be a strong focus on Cayman’s unique maritime history while acknowledging the islands’ piratical past. She said the festival was an opportunity to reimagine the historical aspects of that relationship, in partnership with the culture ministry’s agencies, including the Cayman Islands National Museum and the National Gallery of the Cayman Islands.
The Pirates Festivities schedule of events and news is expected to be updated shortly here.
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Category: Business, Community, Local News, Tourism
I thought that they had changed the name of the festival to “Heritage Week” a few years ago.
My last heritage day visit was about 15-20 years ago. West bay had a few stalls, one of which was an old dear making thatch rope. But she was just there, doing that task, with nothing on her stall to explain what or how to the visitors. The rest of the stalls were selling stuff that you could buy in the supermarket or the bar at lower prices.
We have few activities that could justifiably claim to be heritage, but little to no effort goes into any display and I can see the same happening again. If properly planned and supported (of course, with expensive and unnecessary consultants), skinning turtles, making rope could be displayed all year around. But there’s no need to add on all the other foolishness of stalls selling crap.
Supermarkets (and not many restaurants) cannot cook food that good.
Heritage days are too expensive, and to see what ??? Not enough people attended. These events will now be prolonged to 3 months. Errrr ..i dont know
One day is enough. It’s fun for the kids and gets people out. This is massive massive overkill.
I agree 100%. And if it ever comes to a vote, I would vote to abolish it.
What a hot mess
Actually, one day is too much.
One day is too much. Dump it!!!
What a buffoon. An absolute waste of a vote in WB. Nothing of substance has ever been produced by BB.
A people get the government they deserve.
Failed civil servant and failed businessman = politician. Not the first and probably not the last.
What! Is this Government gone completely Crazy 😜?
YES. !00 %!
What a damn fool idea. We should all boycott it. Damn foolery at it’s best. Smh
Dear oh dear. Kill me now.
Oh gosh, what next. I am never lost for words but really don’t know what to say here!!
Might I suggest something like, “Oh Dear God. We now have proof that CIG values money more than health and sanity of their citizens.”
You are too funny, thanks
Funny? Yes, but true.
Machetes and drug canoes #PiratesWeek
Whose great idea was this? OMG this thing is outdated and boring and struggles to get spectators. People are over it! One week was too much much less 3 months. So many unqualified people in Gov. God take the wheel please!
I can kind of understand what they are trying for. Spot travel – the idea that people aren’t planning a year in advance for a week+ vacation any more but will come for a long weekend. And by spreading it out people looking to travel ‘sometime in Sept/Oct’ might try Cayman over somewhere else without a ‘festival’ that fits their schedule. – But – They are going to need to make each of the district days a good ‘festival’ in its own right. This can be done, and by spacing them out they could do this. Event 1, pack up, host essentially the same event next week in another location. Like ‘the circus coming to town’. And it doesn’t need to be anything fancy, just better thought out than the district days have been recently, with more activities throughout the day and more participation. (Like a busker having their friends in the audience to start the clapping.) Which they can achieve by having a core ‘district day programme team’ that moves from location to location. (Including things like shaded seating areas, etc., etc., etc.)
I wish them luck. But noticeably lacking (for years) in this ‘tourism’ initiative has been the CITA. How do the tourist operations plan for the community to benefit from Pirates Week?
What made the old district day, etc., events work was so many more people (relatively) seeing the benefit of tourism and so the benefit of them volunteering a lot of time towards their district heritage/parade committee(s). These were mostly people NOT employed in the formal tourism industry. But if CITA can’t be bothered to get involved, and none of my neighbours work in tourism, why should I? That is (in part) the virtuous circle they need to reestablish to get Pirates Week meaningful again. Or, just make it purely professional with the ‘district day programme team’ coming to town. Supported by the various professional on-island companies doing things like tents and sound and etc.
I think you would do better with a couple of toga parties during a Greek Week like we used to have at my frat house in the 70’s. Celebrate your tourists’ youths. It wouldn’t be any more vulgar than your carnival, maybe less.
. . . the ceremonial march of the bankers, attorneys and realtors hawking undervalued homes of struggling Caymanians for selected investors??
lol, no one who would come for this would have money to buy here. It’s the worst time of year, rainy, hot, humid…YUCK! That’s why the prices are lower, its not for our “high net worth tourists”
I was considering inviting family for Pirates Week this year when I heard it was coming back. Now forget it. Why bother when you can’t get it all in in one week. Three months??? I don’t think so.
I don’t know why anyone would bring their family to see crap like that!
Three months of Pirates Festival + 2 wine and shake parades (Batabano & Cay Mas). Utter stupidity and waste of our $$$
They struggle to come up with something interesting now, can you imagine trying to fill three months. Can Kenneth please publish the plans for this so we can see if he will spend more of our money on this rubbish than he will take in. First it was the rinky dink football team, then using his time that we are paying him to work for us on handing out his wife’s brochures, now this charade! Is there anyone in his orbit who can talk some sense in to his head? Mr. Premier, are you onboard with this? What says you Mr. Minister of Finance? We need someone to deliver us from his foolishness.
I can recall the (truly) good old days, when a telephone call to Cable and Wireless to find out the time resulted in a real person telling you what the time was. Also the sight of the governor (Mr.Tom Russell) in full period costume being taken into custody on the second floor balcony of the Court House and marched downstairs, followed by an announcement by the chief pirate to the public of the terms for his release.
cable and useless were once useful? I dont belive it.
It was unbelievably expensive to call overseas, when and if you could get through.
They were! Lime wuss, Flow wussa
Still careless & worthless!
How does likening Caymanian “heritage” and embraced culture to piracy, for a quarter of the year, benefit the 75% of GDP booked by the real engine of the Cayman Islands: a blacklist navigating, perception challenged Financial Services industry? Tone deaf idea. Rename it Heritage month, get it done in 4 weekends, and skip the endangered turtle meat.
So now I have 3 months that I definitely won’t be visiting instead of just 2 weeks🤣
They are bringing back heritage days, THAT’S AWESOME!. Love my wampas and roasted corn in bodden town.
It has been a shame that they lumped all the heritage days into georgetown.
What a stupid idea.
Can’t make this stuff up! Sigh.
Bernie and Kenny just did.
Whom ever voted for these clowns needs a head wobble. Buying land for 6nmillion to make a “craft market”, using their power to promote family business and now they can’t come up with anything else to make the islands attractive to residents and visitors except to add another 11 weeks to a festival that struggles to get any joy out of one week.
At least DOT is trying with something other than cruise ships.
The Seattle pirates have always gone into the schools, do charity, and FLY in.
How about some local entertainment at night instead of just drinking at a bar?
How did an uneducated nincompoop like this become a Minister again???
How much money will our government be putting into this 3month festival? Did they ask anyone else their opinions on that? I don’t remember being asked by my distrcit rep. Hmmm.
ive never in my life heard of such a long event , why?
Its exhausted anyway. Give it a rest,
Madness.
3 months of district fights and drunkenness? Lets face it they cant handle being social anymore.
Are they still having the parade where everyone sho twerks gets arrested?
Lunacy at its highest.
Last time they had hetitage events in each district, not enough folk came out. Food was pricey and waste of food too. I can’t imagine repeating the same thing but for 3 months ??? Helloooo
Them old people rolling in their grave knowing we celebrate pirates known for raping and pillaging.
A week was good, maybe a month, but three months is overboard, pun intended.
And indentured servitude otherwise known as slavery, whitewashed in history
Cayman was not a pirate hub at all and yet, marketing firms and the business community want to make a week long festival into 3 months?
Makes sense here. Its all make believe.
https://caymanresident.com/about/government-history-politics/early-cayman-history/pirates
Except they didn’t operate here. And why would they? Not on any of the known trade routes. Jamaica yes, Bahamas for sure, West Indies yes – here- just made up. Just look at your links claims – they were picking up crews here in he 1770s ? When the population was tiny? Careening their vessels and collecting turtles? When they would then have to sail 300 miles into the prevailing wind, in square rigged vessels that don’t beat to wind at all well, just to get to Jamaica, and another 1500 miles to get to the sugar West Indies? There may have been the occasional visit from pirates heading back from the Mexican coast, but to call Cayman a pirate hub is just fantasy stuff. Prove me wrong – cite a reliable source – except you cant, because the whole Cayman as a pirate haven stuff is romantic rubbish made up to attract tourists and for whatever reason seized upon by some Caymanians as somehow glamourous. Strange ho people are far less attracted to Cayman’s very real history in the 70’s and 80’s of money laundering and fraud – real life modern piracy. Guess we need a Johnny Depp movie about white collar crime before that becomes a tourist attraction.
Nailed it.
No drinking water on surface.
Been there, done that already in 1993 with ‘The Firm!’
Tom Cruise
Haven shed us in a such better light.
Just an excuse for Kenny to chuck tax payers money at certain carefully selected vendors.
No, for 400 years it was a notorious poorly marked ship-wrecking and salvage negotiation insurance claim nightmare, colonized with disserters. Just because some of the “salvage” helpers arrived with weapons, was just good negotiating practice back then. Lloyds has hundreds of years of records and ship logs that tell what kind of place this was.
What a fricken joke! On one hand they want to attract high net worth tourists and then they come up with this…WTF…I’m dying at the stupidity.
Fantasy Land
No, ‘Fantasy Island’
“The planes boss!” Bernie ‘Tatoo’ Bush
Don’t forget that Bernie was once Chief Pirate!
Perfect timing too; right in the peak of our usual tropical cyclone density.
Hopefully this works out for Minister Bush in promoting Caymanian history and culture, which stimulates the tourism sector of the economy.
Despite having concern at the length and added expense on the public purse this might bring, let’s see how it goes before criticizing.
We shall see. Best wishes to Pirates event committee.
As a tourist, I am going to add my two cents. Would I come down for Pirate’s week …for the Pirates, NO. Would I fly in for a parade to see people walking- drinking-gyrating in the streets- NO ( and I am not old). I would go to Heritage Days in the districts if they were worth it meaning if the local specialty food was there, and there was something going on to bring interest, arts, sports, something.
What I do think is needed and could go on for 3 months – could even last all year ( one night a week)to attract tourists would be something like what Bermuda does. Harbour Nights. A family street party with local businesses out in the street selling food, arts and crafts vendors, entertainment, a live band, lots of locals and tourists walking about. It is always a pleasant event.
One more suggestion, if I may, if these events are meant for tourists, then they need to be advertised so that we can buy our airfare/hotel tickets in advance. People have to plan. Unless they follow the cayman news, and many do, they would never know.
I agree with you 100%
Stupidity. This “festival” was good when it started but is long overdue for retirement.
SO much of Cayman is antiquated and they just continue to go all in…such a shame
Shaking the booty for the vigorous 3 month rump of the hurricane season. Now that makes a lot of sense.
Why not make it the whole year? Surely the complete lawlessness and corruption we see around us today is justification for going back to the good ole’ swashbuckling days.
Did they even think this through at all? How are tourists going to come for a 3-month long event?
Not to mention, it’s going to get boring being drawn out for so long. Hell, I’m already bored and it hasn’t even started as yet!
How many tourist even go to the heritage days. For that matter, how many people outside the district go to their heritage day?
So Pirate’s Week is now Pirate’s Quarter?
😂🤣
Tourist quarter or tourist doubloon?
The pirate’s festival is in full swing year long – just look at the public and not-so-public activities of our Cabinet and their cronies. We even have a pirate king with a funny wig and a robe!
😂🤣
This is horrendous, pirates week was already a weird culty thing that facilitates grown ups doing role playing whilst giving each other “back massages”. Now you say we have to deal with these weirdo grown ups for a quarter of the year?
It’s called “larp” or Larping
live action role playing
thunderbolt, thunderbolt, thunderbolt
It’s a terrible idea, this kitchy idea will attract the tackiest of tourists at best and they can’t afford to come here and will put off the high end tourists we seen 6 to want to attract. SMH
Exactly so GROSS
“This is the start of a process to continuously be built on year to year,”
Christ!!! What’s the end game ? A whole year long festival ?
Some would say modern day piracy occurs year round… why not the festival too?
Interesting point. To modernize the festival we should update it – ceremonial landing of the money launderers and their march to the down town banks, the gathering of realtors to ceremonially offer properties to hide stolen funds, the parade of the bent politicians and the trial of the boiler room and ponzi schemers.
It does seem quite long, but, perhaps, it will be pleasant and beneficial.
I guess Bernie has nothing else to do … three months ???!!!
At least BB is trying to give being Minister of Culture a real shot.
Remember when Sir Alden was Minister of Culture and dressed up like a magenta bird with little tights on.
Remember it? Blimey, I’m still tryin’ to forget it. It was a monumental national embarrassment.
Alden wearing those short pink tights. 🤣😂
Culture yes, pirates…not so much. But I do see the appeal to tourists.
Tourists might just happen to like this and, if it stimulates the economy positively, that would be a good thing.
If this goes well, it might be a good function in providing socio-economic benefits. We shall see.
Avasst recession! Tis time to walk the plank and be gone with ya!
What if it goes bad? Spend too much money, don’t make any money?
Surely the goal could’ve been achieved by stretching it to 1 month.
Maybe. But, if this 3-month of festivities is successful, we might look at this model.
That being said, it would appear that stretching it for 1 month would have been the sweet spot.
Let’s see how it all goes.
It doesn’t work…no one with have any cash left due cost of living is too high! I am only going for 1 day…the main event.
Many Caymanians will be in that boat.
Cayman is now for foreigners, not for Caymanians anymore. Sad, but true.
rare smart move by cig!
When is Blackbeard STD Awareness Week?
Sarcasm? I hope.
Surely PPM could have done worse.
cayman should hae a year long festival….that would be truly unique and would be a great tourist gimmick!
We already do. Our MPs are pirates all year round.
Rrrrrrrrrrrhhhh!!! (DMX sound)
It’s definitely gonna suck.
I think most Cayman residents would argue that the Pirates are out in full force all year long!
Pirate’s week was, long ago, a family-friendly event. Now, we are expected to embrace it, so rich people can make money. Rich people who hire mostly expats to run their businesses. We haven’t taken our kids to the last years events because — while our kids are smart and know the ways the world has changed — they just don’t want to go. They don’t want to see adults behaving badly. I don’t either.
It’s embarrassing to all. Just CANNOT get behind this idea at all.
Pure lunacy!
There were simply no Pirates of the Caribbean here and we embrace this as “culture”?
Doh Wrong
https://caymanresident.com/about/government-history-politics/early-cayman-history/pirates
Cayman Resident as a legitimate history source?
Malarkey!
where is the turting, rope making, fishing, boat making, wattle and daubing, farming etc…nope piracy and foreign sell out “culture” for the wite man who looking loot to take from us more
The “white man” is not always white anymore. Sometimes also brown and black too.
That’s it then. Booking my flights right now for my 17 family members and I to arrive on the 2nd of September and leave on the 27th of November.
Probably stay at Black Urchin (their rates seem reasonable)and just use the very affordable taxis the whole time.
You’re obviously being sarcastic.
Save money on plane tickets by using the Jack Sparrow method to tie sea turtles to yout feet
Isn’t all of September and most of October slow season for tourists? Isn’t it also hurricane season? Isn’t when most families are settling children back in school? Thanks, but, It’s a pass!
Dear God. Why so long? Guess we have enough cash to just keep giving it out.
Cayman politicians have absolutely no economic sense……they see revenues and just say lets do that more….Aldart did it with work permits and gave away all security for Caymanians….they saw it with stamp duties and allowed ugly massive buildings and destruction of mangroves and natural habitat. Now they see it with expanding an exclusive event to a season…..they should just change our name to Pirate Island and do it year round.