The African Cultural and Development Association (ACDA) is in its 30th year and will be celebrating its 30th Emancipation Festival at the National Park on Freedom Day, Tuesday, August 1st 2023, under the theme “30 Years of community” #UBUNTU and sub theme “Our 1823 Bicentennial Martyrs, Reviving their spirit”.
According to ACDA, the countdown to August 1st has begun with the pre-emancipation day events.
Tomorrow, at its Headquarters, a celebration of life will be held to honour Queen Mother Sis Clementine Marshall at 7 pm. From July 17th – 31st the African Street Theatre (Bizarre) will be on Main Street avenue from 10 am – 5 pm daily.
ACDA revealed that on July 30th-31st an Emancipation spiritual tribute for the 1823 Bicentennial Martyrs will be held at Parade Ground at 6 pm daily hosted by Bro Irving in collaboration with the 1823 committee.
On August 1st at 5am a sunrise service will be held and then the National Park will be officially opened for the festival from 10 am until 9 pm, ACDA added. The National Park will see the display of many different events: cultural, fashion, cuisines, music, dances, jewellery and much more. Further, from 12 pm until 2 pm Ansa McAL will host a cookup competition and regional, international and local performers will be live on stage.
Educational booths will be on display that will be giving information on the 1823 Rebellion, African hairstyles, inventions and the Afro-Guyanese village movement. There will be competitions for the best dressed, man, woman, child, family and group, as well as the most creative costume and float, the organisation said.
Activities for children will also be available such as face painting, bouncy castle and much more in the play area. There will be a range of sporting activities such as softball cricket, tape ball cricket, football, dominoes and much more.
ACDA said that while many of the villages it has honoured with the spotlight of the Emancipation Day celebrations have a common history of purchase by freed slaves, the community being focused on in 2023 is unique based on its history. For Emancipation 2023 ACDA honours Bachelors Adventure, which sits between the villages of Paradise to the east and Enterprise to the west.
The 1823 Demerara Rebellion displayed incredible daring, courage, the effectiveness of group action, and the capacity of the enslaved to shape their own fate by attacking the institutional and physical embodiment of their servitude, the organisation said.. It is impossible to overstate the significance of the massive revolt in Guyana sandwiched as it was between two other momentous slave rebellions, Barbados (Bussa) in 1816, and the Jamaica insurrection in 1831. Together, all three revolts helped to undermine the political, economic, and moral foundations of the British imperial plantation system and, consequently, the existence of worldwide chattel slavery, ACDA informed.
