Pirates Week 2016 Official Launch

Melanie McField – Executive Director, Pirates Week

GIS Studios, Government Administration Building

Wednesday 31st August, 2016 12:00pm

Thank you minister and councillor.
Protocol having been established; good afternoon.

Over the past 39 years the Pirates Week National Festival has grown into the biggest annual attraction in the Cayman Islands. It offers musical entertainment, heritage, sports, culture, costumes and cuisine in a display that caters to all ages and interests for our residents and visitors.
The aim of Pirates Week 2016 is to continue in that vein to:
• Increase visitor arrivals during the off-peak season
• To highlight the creative talents of our people.
• And to pass down our traditions, building upon a culture of inclusion of all people; all ages; all nationalities; and to enjoy what the Cayman Islands have to offer.

All this while aggressively marketing, promoting and developing the Cayman Islands’ potential as a festival tourism destination.

As the minister mentioned our dates are November 4th and 5th in Little Cayman, 10th to the 20th in Grand Cayman and 26th to the 27th in Cayman Brac with a family bon fire and welcome party on the 25th.

For members of the press, after this briefing we will forward by e-mail, a detailed events schedule and some other relevant information that you may find useful.
And we’d like to present the Minister with the 2016 Pirates Week promotional poster which each of you will also receive a copy.
But before that, I would like to highlight our main sponsors.
Thank you to the Minister and his team at the Ministry of District Administration, Tourism and Transport and our dedicated team at the Tourism Attraction Board; both of which assists with funding as well as volunteering their time to continue developing our National Festival.
We wish to announce our Diamond Sponsor for the second year in a row is Cayman Distributors Group. We are very thankful to Mr Roulstone and his team for their

continued support and we look forward to working alongside them in putting on another fabulous festival.
In addition to highlighting our diamond sponsor, we wish to announce our partnership with Hurley’s Media as the official Media Sponsor of the 2016 Pirates Week Festival. We would like to thank them for their commitment to assisting us in bringing our public information strategy from vision to fruition.
We also want to recognise major contributions from other private sector companies and public sector organisations:
• FLOW
• Cayman Airways
• The Ministry of Culture
• The Ministry of Sports
• The Department of Tourism
• The Public Works Department
• Department of Environmental Health
• Radio Cayman

This year we’ve chosen the Age of Romance as our annual theme. This aligns with the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s mandate, calling 2016 the Year of Romance.
We are encouraging all schools, non profits and the general business community who will be involved in the production of floats; as well as Festival Queen Competitors, to use this theme in their central design ideas.
Additionally, we have met with the District Committees and are working with them to incorporate the Age of Romance theme at their respective district events.
Another aspect we have applied in creating a bigger and better Festival is implementation of the District Enhancement Strategy. This strategy aims to streamline the district events—acting as a guideline for the volunteer groups—while still allowing for each district to showcase its uniqueness.
With this strategy we are incorporating other cultural entities such as the National Gallery and the Cultural Foundation; as well the Tourism Attraction Board’s sister agencies the Botanic Park and Pedro St James.
Of course we cannot host our district events without the dedication of our district committees and other volunteers who we applaud for their tireless efforts year round.
We encourage those who are interested in participating in their district’s event at any level, to contact their district’s committee chairperson. We will provide their contact details on our social media pages in the coming days.

Speaking of information, we are about to undergo a revamp of our website; making it more user friendly and in the near future allowing for e-commerce. In the interim, feel free to follow us on Facebook or twitter as much of our updates will happen there while the site is being worked on. Our Facebook page is: CaymanIslandsPiratesWeekFestival and our Twitter handle is: @cipiratesweek
To wrap up, I’d like to once again ask for the assistance of the business community.
While the Festival’s administration is subsidized by a Government grant, the Pirates Week Office must generate funds for each event during the celebrations; including the Fireworks, Landing, Float Parades, Street Dances, sporting and youth events, to name a few.
Decorations, clean-up and staffing for these are also our responsibility.
Seeing as most of our events are held with no admission; operating funds are generated by beverage and vendor sales, T-shirt and souvenir sales and of course by donations and sponsorship from individuals and businesses.
Please if you can and would like to be a part of the biggest social and community event of these three islands, reach out to us, we still have sponsorship opportunities available; whether it be cash or in-kind we appreciate your contribution.
Thank you all for your time and we look forward to celebrating our national festival with you!

END

Pirates Week District and Heritage Committees

Chairpersons committee contact information:

North Side
Jay Ebanks, 916-4249 or [email protected]

George Town
Dale Ramoon, [email protected]
Cheryl Myles, 916-5938 or [email protected]

West Bay
Doey Kelly, 916-1163 or [email protected]
John Smith, 925-1605 or [email protected]
Zeta Bodden, 916-1559 or [email protected]

East End
Edney McLean, 917-6031
Kendal Connor, 925-8992 or [email protected]

Bodden Town
Mary Lawrence, 924-2406 or [email protected]

Cayman Brac
Liz Walton-Thompson, 948-2256 or [email protected]
Melanie Scott, 924-3205 or [email protected]
Simone Scott, [email protected]

Little Cayman
Kerry Scott, [email protected]