To­ba­go now has al­most 700 per­sons cer­ti­fied in var­i­ous cul­tur­al ex­pres­sions.

These in­di­vid­u­als and cul­tur­al groups dis­played the is­land’s mu­sic, dance, dra­ma, the­atre, vi­su­al arts and craft at the Di­vi­sion of Tourism Cul­ture and Trans­porta­tion’s Per­form­ing Arts Train­ing Pro­gramme Show­case.

The well-pa­tro­n­ised event saw hun­dreds of sup­port­ers and cul­tur­al en­thu­si­asts flock­ing to the Ce­cil Dal­rym­ple Au­di­to­ri­um of the Sig­nal Hill Sec­ondary School on Sun­day evening.

The show marked the end of train­ing ses­sions and pro­vid­ed a fo­rum for par­tic­i­pants to dis­play what they had learned at the Di­vi­sion of Tourism Cul­ture and Trans­porta­tion train­ing ini­tia­tive.

Ad­dress­ing par­tic­i­pants, the ad­min­is­tra­tor in the Di­vi­sion Sel­ma Gra­ham said the Tourism Di­vi­sion’s pro­gramme sig­nif­i­cant­ly strength­ens the To­ba­go pop­u­la­tion as well as im­parts cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal knowl­edge.

Among the evening’s high­lights was Rhythm Babes.

They were well re­ceived by the crowd for their pa­tri­ot­ic dance, which in­cor­po­rat­ed well-syn­chro­nised and en­er­getic East In­di­an and African dance moves.

Scar­bor­ough RC Pri­ma­ry School al­so per­formed well.

De­tailed cos­tum­ing com­ple­ment­ed the stu­dents’ ren­di­tion of the Ne­gro spir­i­tu­al, Kum ba yah, which made for an emo­tion­al pre­sen­ta­tion.

Stu­dents of John Memo­r­i­al Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist Pri­ma­ry School were equal­ly en­gag­ing, start­ing the Christ­mas sea­son ear­ly as they played car­ols us­ing gui­tars, chac-chac and mu­sic hand­bells.

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress, Sec­re­tary of Tourism, Cul­ture and Trans­porta­tion Na­dine Stew­art-Phillips, said the train­ing pro­vid­ed par­tic­i­pants with per­for­mance skills which they will show­case at var­i­ous To­ba­go fes­ti­vals.

“The per­form­ing arts play an in­te­gral role in de­vel­op­ing our cit­i­zens and this pro­gramme is in­deed a fun­da­men­tal feat to ad­vance our lo­cal and na­tion­al econ­o­my glob­al­ly, as cre­ative in­dus­tries con­tin­ue to be among the ma­jor dri­vers of glob­al com­pet­i­tive­ness and de­vel­op­ment.”

A to­tal of 665 cer­tifi­cates were award­ed to par­tic­i­pants of the Per­form­ing Arts Train­ing Pro­gramme.