The organisers of Bermuda Day celebrations in Camden, Central London, have extended the celebrations to a second British city this year to accommodate for demand.

The SpredLuv Collective, led by Bermudian Cyril Rubaine, will go ahead with its seventh annual May 24 event in the English capital but has added Liverpool as a venue for a much bigger celebration on May 3.

It will take place in a converted warehouse called Camp and Furnace in the city’s cultural hub, the “Baltic Triangle”. The Liverpool celebration will have more activities for families and children, and will include all things Bermudian from the food and cocktails to the live music and limbo dancing. There will be a family zone and an adult zone, as the celebrations are often fuelled by no small amounts of Black Seal Rum.

Organisers have also arranged numerous coach services from three major British cities — Manchester, London and Birmingham — to transport guests to Liverpool and back. On board again this year is Bermudian Cha’Von Clarke’s CKC Corporation, which has partnered with SpredLuv for the past three years in London.

Mr Rubaine told The Royal Gazette: “The venue in London doesn’t accommodate our big ideas, so we decided to add another venue in Liverpool that has a large enough indoor space. One of the organisers, Jeremy Blades, lives there. There are a lot of Bermudians who live up north, in the Midlands and in Manchester, so it is just easier. We’re not ready to do an outdoor event; we would need more funding and sponsorship for that.

“Last year we did our usual Bermuda Day event at The Lockside [pub] in Camden and we had a number of children’s activities, but it was just too small. The bigger space allows us to do table tennis, sumo, hopscotch, have vendors, a family quiz and a scavenger hunt. Now we have the numbers, it makes sense to move to a bigger place.”

There will be a distinctly island feel, including a Bermudian “dance freeze” — like musical chairs without the chairs — Bermudian food such as fishcakes, peas and rice, potato salad, fish chowder and jerk chicken, Bermudian cocktails using Black Seal Rum, and plenty of Bermudian entertainment, including Matthew Bento, Zion and the Mighty Leap, and Staggarlee.

Mr Rubaine said that the London Bermuda Day event had attracted up to 2,000 people annually and he expects that the Liverpool event will attract about the same number.

He said that in the seven years he has run the event he has received little to no funding, adding that the Liverpool event would be more costly than that in London.

“To date we have had virtually no funding,” he said. “We have reached out to organisations that are responsible for putting out the word about Bermuda as a destination, but it’s been like pulling teeth. We are in negotiations with an unnamed organisation for this year’s event and, fingers crossed, we will be funded this year. The one in Liverpool will run in excess of $6,000, which isn’t too much. We certainly have more people coming on board to help organise it and we have more vendors interested. It’s growing even without the funding.”

More details on the event can be found via SpredLuv’s Facebook page, Spredluv Collective.