Mark Lyn­der­say

Trinidad and To­ba­go's Car­ni­val looks set for in­ter­est­ing times.

No less a per­son than Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has ex­plained that for his gov­ern­ment man­ag­ing an eco­nom­ic down­turn, "oth­er pri­or­i­ties will fall in place and Car­ni­val is low down on the totem pole. Very low down."

"The Gov­ern­ment should fa­cil­i­tate the fes­ti­val," he said, "but the Gov­ern­ment shouldn't own the fes­ti­val and be the bankroller of the fes­ti­val."

The Gov­ern­ment's of­fi­cial Car­ni­val man­ag­er, Min­is­ter of Cul­ture, Arts and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly has put fu­el to the fire of that prime min­is­te­r­i­al di­rec­tive, cut­ting spend­ing on Car­ni­val by $60 mil­lion (just a bit more than one fifth of last year's of­fi­cial bud­get) for 2016.

More cuts are like­ly to come, though with no ar­chi­tec­ture on which to stretch their cur­rent spend­ing and most of the his­to­ry of bil­lions of dol­lars ag­gres­sive­ly un­ac­count­ed for, such cuts are like­ly to be ar­bi­trary and hap­pen at a re­move from the ac­tu­al need of se­ri­ous prac­ti­tion­ers of Car­ni­val arts.

One such cut is like­ly to be the So­cadrome, which scraped by for yet an­oth­er year, de­spite rep­re­sent­ing no di­rect cost to the Gov­ern­ment while con­tin­u­ing to grow as a suc­cess­ful en­tre­pre­neur­ial ef­fort at meet­ing Car­ni­val's needs with­out tax­ing the pub­lic purse.

This po­lit­i­cal­ly-led schiz­o­phre­nia about Car­ni­val fund­ing sim­ply has to stop.If ne­ces­si­ty is the moth­er of in­ven­tion, the ready avail­abil­i­ty of a seem­ing­ly un­end­ing stream of state sup­plied cash has on­ly served to stran­gle in­no­v­a­tive think­ing and en­tre­pre­neur­ship in Car­ni­val.

The Gov­ern­ment, as Dr Row­ley has cor­rect­ly as­sessed, has no busi­ness get­ting in­volved in Car­ni­val. State in­sti­tu­tions do not un­der­stand the event, and their in­ter­ven­tions have been man­i­fest­ly de­struc­tive for the most part, while ac­ci­den­tal­ly pro­vid­ing funds for small cre­ative ef­forts with the back spat­ter of mas­sive fire­hose ap­pli­ca­tions of tax­pay­er's mon­ey.

There is no mech­a­nism for a small cre­ative pro­fes­sion­al work­ing in the Car­ni­val space to ap­ply for mer­it-based fund­ing for a project. Those cre­atives must ei­ther shoe­horn their ideas in­to ex­ist­ing fund­ing trib­u­taries or fig­ure out how to do it on their own. Most aren't done at all.

There is quite pos­si­bly no bet­ter demon­stra­tion of the gap be­tween of­fi­cial gov­er­nance im­per­a­tives and the fes­ti­val's re­al­i­ty than the State dri­ven mot­to for Car­ni­val 2016, "One Road, One Stage, One Car­ni­val."

What does that even mean? When Lord Kitch­en­er sang of a "road made to walk," he wasn't talk­ing about a sin­gle road or route.He was cel­e­brat­ing Car­ni­val's re­mark­able re­silience, adapt­abil­i­ty and ca­pac­i­ty to find fresh paths, both lit­er­al and aes­thet­ic.

That isn't the sort of thing that fits in­to bu­reau­crat­ic chan­nels nor does it pro­vide ready veins of op­por­tu­ni­ty for po­lit­i­cal min­ing.

It's time to ac­knowl­edge that the State's in­ter­ven­tion in­to the an­nu­al fes­ti­val has been al­most uni­ver­sal­ly dele­te­ri­ous to cre­ative po­ten­tial, in­de­pen­dent think­ing and en­tre­pre­neur­ial spir­it and has proven cu­mu­la­tive­ly far more lethal than a thou­sand Colo­nial sol­diers on horse­back seek­ing to open­ly kill Car­ni­val.

Ca­lyp­so tents in 2016 would be un­recog­nis­able to a pa­tron in 1984 used to the abun­dance of­fered by the Orig­i­nal Young Brigade, Ca­lyp­so Re­vue and Spek­taku­la Fo­rum. Bat­tle­ma­nia, an ef­fort to re­cap­ture the elec­tric mag­ic of tent clash­es, col­lapsed.

The Greens at Panora­ma Semi­fi­nals fi­nal­ly suc­cumbed to the tone-deaf throt­tling of Pan Trin­ba­go, somepa­trons re­ju­ve­nat­ing the source space, the North Stand, but more than 2,000 skipped steel­band sup­port en­tire­ly to prance around the Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in old cos­tumes and Mon­day wear at Bac­cha­nal Road, pro­duced by Cae­sar's Army.

The cos­tumes of the Car­ni­val pa­rade are sharply bi­fur­cat­ed be­tween the com­mer­cial­ly dri­ven fluff­ing of large bands and a tra­di­tion­al cos­tume tra­di­tion that's drift­ing in­ex­orably to­ward a cri­sis in de­sign, sup­port and fal­ter­ing busi­ness mod­els.

The T&T Car­ni­val has been at sat­u­ra­tion point for tourism and con­tin­ues to pro­duce events that have proven im­pos­si­ble to ei­ther prof­itably broad­cast live or pack­age for re­tail con­sump­tion.These are not mys­te­ri­ous and un­know­able facts.

They have ex­ist­ed clear­ly and bold­ly along­side an un­de­ni­able ex­u­ber­ance, a con­tin­u­ous­ly re­freshed well of in­ven­tive­ness and per­son­al courage that buoys Car­ni­val past these pot­holes of in­dif­fer­ence and trag­i­cal­ly mud­dled of­fi­cial think­ing each year.

If the Gov­ern­ment wants to pull out of spend­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions on Car­ni­val it must first de­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty, so it knows what it's been spend­ing that mon­ey on, de­cide what it is will­ing to sup­port in the pub­lic in­ter­est while al­low­ing stake­hold­ers to chart their own course for the fes­ti­val.

As a cor­rec­tive for get­ting ma­jor rep­re­sen­ta­tives of these stake­hold­ers hooked on easy gov­ern­ment mon­ey, it must in­sti­tute cold turkey busi­ness de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes that de­fine sus­tain­able busi­ness mod­els which en­cour­age au­di­ence fo­cused cre­ative think­ing.

It must al­so with­draw from fund­ing com­pe­ti­tion prize mon­ey, which has been the sin­gle most ru­inous force in Car­ni­val's evo­lu­tion over the last two decades.It is no ac­ci­dent that the most en­tre­pre­neur­ial thinkers in Car­ni­val al­so don't both­er with the fes­ti­val's com­pe­ti­tions.

The Gov­ern­ment, in the per­sons of Dr Gads­by-Dol­ly and Dr Row­ley must look to the bil­lions earned by suc­cess­ful glob­al en­ter­tain­ers that are be­ing lost while lo­cal minds scram­ble to win con­tests with ab­solute­ly no in­ter­na­tion­al cur­ren­cy.

Car­ni­val will not be­come a pil­lar of suc­cess­ful and sus­tain­able di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion the way we're do­ing it now and that's just the way it is.

The Gov­ern­ment, as Dr Row­ley has cor­rect­ly as­sessed, has no busi­ness get­ting in­volved in Car­ni­val. State in­sti­tu­tions do not un­der­stand the event, and their in­ter­ven­tions have been man­i­fest­ly de­struc­tive for the most part, while ac­ci­den­tal­ly pro­vid­ing funds for small cre­ative ef­forts with the back spat­ter of mas­sive fire­hose ap­pli­ca­tions of tax­pay­er's mon­ey.