Unity in the Community -- this is what Culture Fest is all about.

And what started in 1979 at PHC Stadium as an attempt to resolve the split between black grass root religious organisations is now a national event.

This year's event on October 13 is being organised by Dred and Baha Productions and will be tied in with Jazzscape whose promoters want the cultural event to help make their idea work.

Also lending a hand and providing the venue for the event is the West End Development Corporation (Wedco).

Culture Fest original founder Kim Tucker said in the late seventies there was a definite need for the black community to develop communications with one another.

The United Cultural Committee was formed specifically to help bring them together and show them the reasons behind their separation.

They were all looking for the same thing in the community, added festival co-founder Gladwin Simmons, but their differences led them to do it separately.

The new idea which came from this and is now being spread by the event's organisers is: "We need to fight with peace instead of for it.'' Mr. Simmons said Culture Fest became the vehicle for addressing the black community's social concerns.

In Culture Fest, each community's different culture is expressed through food, crafts, music and dance in a market type atmosphere.

This helped everyone understand each other a little better, continued Mr.

Tucker, and as they worked together to organise the event, a relationship was formed.

He said organisers viewed their collective relationship like Bermuda's character -- a place with many islands that without bridges made it difficult to access one another.

"We need social bridges to make dealing with one another easier,'' he said.

Entering the nineties, continued Mr. Simmons, it became obvious that mounting social problems were causing great concern and needed to be addressed.

He said an effective approach against the problems would only come from a broad range of community commitment.

To achieve this the two extreme poles in the community had to be united.

These two entities were fighting one another and went against what they stood for in their struggle to reach a common ground, added Mr. Simmons.

It was decided that putting Culture Fest at a national level would help solve the concerns that the community at large was calling for to be addressed.

And eventually a relationship between the group and Government was formed with the Ministry of Community and Cultural Affairs becoming involved.

Now the event is backed by several departments including Youth, Sport and Recreation and Tourism.

But this relationship was also difficult to achieve as people were, and still are, skeptical toward Government and anyone working closely with it.

This created a sense of hope in that differences would be resolved without taking a destructive mode to address the problem.

And so the first national Culture Fest was held in 1994 and presented its own unique challenges.