MINISTER of Culture, Gender Affairs, Entertainment and Sport Olivia Grange says that entry to this year’s Emancipation Jubilee will be free of cost.
She made the announcement at the recent launch of the event at Jewels Paradise Cove in Runaway Bay, St Ann.
The annual Emancipation Jubilee celebration, organised by the Jamaica National Heritage Trust, is scheduled to take place on July 31 at the Seville Heritage Park in St Ann.
According to a release from the ministry, Grange said that Emancipation Jubilee “allows us to celebrate a culture that is distinctly ours — Jamaican, but influenced largely by what is distinctly African — that survived the years of enslavement, a success that we owe to our ancestors who, in their own relentless ways ensured that what was culturally endemic to them remained intact in a society that was alien to them”.
“We are happy to say that this year, Emancipation Jubilee is free. It won’t cost you a penny,” Minister Grange said.
She explained that tickets will be printed for crowd control purposes.
The event, now in its twentieth year, is being observed under the theme, ‘Jamaica55, Mek Wi Keep Jubilee Alive!’
The ministry said the event will feature various presentations of traditional Jamaican culture, including Kumina, Johnkoonoo and other folk forms, as well as a re-enactment of the reading of the 1838 Emancipation Proclamation granting freedom from slavery to all Jamaicans.