One Show organisers issue apology, call for venue dedicated to culture
Organisers of Machel Montano’s One Show anniversary concert have apologised for some of the challenges which patrons faced on Carnival Friday night.
In a statement issued today, JayUpscale, Machel Montano and Monk Music sincerely apologised for the late start and the challenges to getting through the gates which did not open at the advertised time.
They blamed the delays in getting the venue ready on time on a sporting event that took place at the Hasely Crawford Stadium a week before.
They said fire services did not allow them to open the gates at the advertised time due to the state of the venue.
“The stadium contractors, the sporting fraternity and all of the show service providers tried to deliver our best while being very cognisant of protecting the property and patrons, but did not deliver on time despite our greatest efforts,” the organisers said.
“We did not have the build-out time that we normally would have had due to a track event seven days before, as a result, at opening time there was a lot of heavy equipment around the perimeter and some more work remained to complete the inside floor. For this reason, the fire services did not allow us to open at our advertised time but we are grateful for their cooperation and guidance, which enabled us to provide an incident-free experience.”
They acknowledged that the show started at 10 pm, an hour late, which inadvertently caused program rearrangements and delays in changeovers.
The organisers are now calling for culture to get its own venue of the size of the national stadium.
They said: “As a nation, we must understand this is our greatest natural resource. Nobody in the world can create stories this rich, produce music this sweet and gather in harmony like this.”
Laura Dowrich-Phillips