The story
Tobago Heritage Festival in Tobago villages
The Tobago Heritage Festival is a rotating, village-based celebration of authentic Tobago folk culture held annually from mid-July into early August, moving each night to a different community across the island for reenactments, storytelling, and traditional performance that preserve customs distinct from Trinidad and Tobago's Carnival.
The Tobago Heritage Festival was established in 1987 out of a clear community concern: that Tobago's own distinct folk traditions, developed separately from and predating much of the modern Carnival culture associated with Trinidad, risked fading from public memory and cultural practice as the larger island's Carnival increasingly dominated the national cultural calendar.