THE Jamaica National Heritage Trust will be holding its annual Heritage Expo at Seville Heritage Park in St Ann today.

The expo, under the theme ‘I Believe in Jamaica. Our land. Our people. Our heritage’, seeks to promote Jamaica’s heritage through exhibitions, speech, drumming, music and dance.

The activities are said to include cultural performances from JCDC award-winning groups featuring traditional folk forms — maypole, quadrille, jonkonoo, ring games, and drumming. There will be exhibitions on our heritage from the different agencies including the Jamaica Information Service, which will be on hand to display a variety of books on our heritage. The expo will also feature an archaeological dig whereby students are shown how to gather evidence of the past and make slide presentations. A candy thrower doing demonstrations, craft pieces, vendors selling traditional foods, a play area for the kids, and spot prizes and surprises will also be at the expo.

Heritage Expo 2010 is being held on a heritage site that celebrates hundreds of years of Jamaica’s history. The site has a museum/heritage education centre, which displays a wide array of artifacts and ruins representing an accurate and comprehensive report of our Amerindian, European and African fore-parents, their individual cultures and how these cultures interacted. Tours of the museum will be free all day for students attending the expo.