Kali­fa Clyne

Heads from var­i­ous car­ni­val boards through­out the world met as part of a glob­al car­ni­val Ini­tia­tive to dis­cuss strate­gies to de­vel­op car­ni­val fes­ti­vals. The meet­ing was held on Ash Wednes­day at the Crowne Plaza, Port-of-Spain. It was aimed at forg­ing stronger ties with di­as­poric car­ni­vals as well as en­gag­ing the T&T Gov­ern­ment in as­sist­ing car­ni­vals abroad. At­tend­ing were Min­is­ter of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Win­ston Pe­ters, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Stephen Cadiz and for­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Murchi­son Brown.

Among the car­ni­val boards rep­re­sent­ed were Den­mark, New Jer­sey, New York, Mi­a­mi, Boston, Mon­tre­al and Toron­to. In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Cadiz said Gov­ern­ment was look­ing at var­i­ous ways to mar­ket T&T as the re al home of Car­ni­val. He said de­spite the fact there were many world car­ni­vals, such as Not­tinghill in the Unit­ed King­dom, and Carib­ana, there was no T&T rep­re­sen­ta­tion dur­ing those fes­tiv­i­ties. He said his min­istry was look­ing at ways to use the T&T Film Com­pa­ny and T&T En­ter­tain­ment Com­pa­ny to mar­ket and brand Trinidad Car­ni­val.

The min­is­ter said in the case of the steel­band, there was no stamp that said it was cre­at­ed in T&T.

Cor­po­rate sec­re­tary of Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val, Asa Sealy, spoke to the T&T Guardian fol­low­ing the meet­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to Sealy, Min­is­ter Pe­ters con­veyed re­grets that the Gov­ern­ment could not as­sist in a mon­e­tary form, but pledged sup­port in terms of ex­per­tise, de­sign­ers, ex­port of mas and the rec­om­men­da­tions of cor­po­rate spon­sors. Sealy, in an ad­dress at the meet­ing, stressed the im­por­tance of get­ting youth in­volved in the busi­ness of car­ni­val.

He said too many in­dus­try lead­ers died try­ing to de­vel­op car­ni­val with­out shar­ing the eco­nom­ic im­por­tance of the in­dus­try to the younger gen­er­a­tion. Sealy de­scribed Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val as a ma­jor stake­hold­er in the world car­ni­val in­dus­try. He said this year would see the join­ing of forces of the two car­ni­vals - Mi­a­mi and Broward - which would be pre­sent­ed as one big event, "Car­ni­val in the Gar­dens". He not­ed that the de­vel­op­ment and suc­cess of any of the car­ni­vals re­flect­ed well on each coun­try's fes­tiv­i­ties.