Pe­ter Ray Blood

Ma­jor changes were an­nounced for next year's Car­ni­val by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) which pro­pos­es ad­di­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions and cash in­cen­tives for mas­quer­aders and steel­bands.

The changes were an­nounced by NCC chair­man Lor­raine Pouchet when she ad­dressed the me­dia and spe­cial­ly in­vit­ed guests who in­clud­ed Arts & Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Min­is­ter Dr Lin­coln Dou­glas and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Brig Carl Al­fon­so at the me­dia launch of the 2016 fes­ti­val on Wednes­day at the VIP lounge of the Grand Stand, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain.

Em­pha­sis­ing that "cre­ativ­i­ty" would be the fo­cus of the NCC for Car­ni­val 2016, Pouchet re­vealed that the most cre­ative band pre­sen­ta­tion would re­ceive $300,000; the best-play­ing cos­tumed steel­band on Car­ni­val Mon­day will re­ceive $100,000; and, ten tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val mas bands will re­ceive $10,000 each for their Car­ni­val Mon­day pre­sen­ta­tion.

The new prizes will be spon­sored by the NCC.

Dou­glas was par­tic­u­lar­ly harsh on the spe­cial in­ter­est groups (SIGs) of the NCC, stat­ing that next year ac­count­abil­i­ty of state funds will be "para­mount." He ad­vised the SIGs to "clar­i­fy your busi­ness ear­ly, ahead of time." Dou­glas said over $300m in state funds were in­vest­ed in this year's Car­ni­val and that the SIGs must ac­count for how monies are spent.

In 2016, he said, his min­istry plans to place em­pha­sis on the coun­try's 53 re­gion­al car­ni­val events. Turn­ing his at­ten­tion to the mas­quer­ade as­pect of the fes­ti­val, he said: "I don't have a prob­lem with biki­ni and beads, but I have a prob­lem with lack of cre­ativ­i­ty."

Dou­glas, who pre­dict­ed that he will be in gov­ern­ment for next year's Car­ni­val, said he in­tends plac­ing more em­pha­sis on re­search in Car­ni­val, and the wider glob­al­i­sa­tion of the fes­ti­val.

There have been min­i­mal al­ter­ations to the se­nior Pa­rade of Bands for next year's fes­ti­val.

Pouchet said that the So­cadrome, an in­no­va­tion by Tribe, at the Jean Pierre Com­plex, in Port-of-Spain, will be in­te­grat­ed in the 2016 pa­rade route.

"To­geth­er with the So­cadrome com­mit­tee, we were able to re­vis­it the So­cadrome. Over­all, we were able to re­lieve the back­log and con­ges­tion typ­i­cal­ly ex­pe­ri­enced along the route. This is some­thing we aim to build on and im­prove for next sea­son."

Sin­gling out pre­vi­ous NCC heads for praise, Pouchet said: "We've had in­spired lead­er­ship. Un­der the watch of Al­fred Agui­ton, Roy Au­gus­tus, Car­los John, Bri­an Kuei Tung, Ke­ston Nan­coo, Howard Chin Lee, Ken­neth De Sil­va, Patrick Arnold, and my di­rect pre­de­ces­sor Al­li­son De­mas, we have grown steadi­ly."

In pur­su­ing the re­turn of cre­ativ­i­ty to Car­ni­val, Pouchet said the NCC will em­bark on an ini­tia­tive by em­brac­ing the Na­tion­al Dance As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T in­to its plans.

"One of the oth­er projects that we are ex­cit­ed about in­volves some on­go­ing work with the Na­tion­al Dance As­so­ci­a­tion to cre­ate an ex­clu­sive train­ing pro­gramme that will in­crease cre­ativ­i­ty in Car­ni­val. The pro­gramme will be host­ed in De­cem­ber and Jan­u­ary, and runs for four to six weeks."

Strict ad­her­ence to rule

Pouchet said that the pa­rade route for the Ju­nior Car­ni­val Pa­rade of the Band on Car­ni­val Sat­ur­day will be­gin on St Vin­cent Street (Trea­sury Build­ing), pro­ceed east along South Quay be­fore head­ing north along Fred­er­ick Street to the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. She said that the NCC will be strin­gent in the sched­ul­ing of this event with the pa­rade be­gin­ning prompt­ly at 7 am and end­ing at 3 pm to fa­cil­i­tate Pan Trin­ba­go's prepa­ra­tions at the Sa­van­nah for the 7 pm com­mence­ment of the Na­tion­al Panora­ma Fi­nal. No chil­dren's band will be al­lowed to be­gin its trek to the Sa­van­nah af­ter noon.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Ros­alind Gabriel said: "This is not a new rule, but it has nev­er been en­forced. In the past some bands have left down­town af­ter 1 pm and were nev­er dis­qual­i­fied."

About the fo­cus on cre­ativ­i­ty, Gabriel said: "It is a good idea. I have been say­ing for a very long time that we need to en­cour­age cre­ativ­i­ty back in­to Car­ni­val. I think for next year Tribe is try­ing to strike a bal­ance by en­cour­ag­ing more cos­tum­ing in­to their de­signs and pre­sen­ta­tions."

Splash band­leader and Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Band­lead­ers As­so­ci­a­tion mem­ber Wren­wick Brown said: "We (NC­BA) were void of any con­sul­ta­tion on these de­ci­sions an­nounced yes­ter­day (Wednes­day) by the NCC."

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Wednes­day's launch was al­so ad­dressed by NCC CEO Michael Guyadeen and guests were treat­ed to live per­for­mances by 2015 Band of the Year/Na­tion­al Panora­ma cham­pi­on Massy Trinidad All Stars, Heather Mac In­tosh, Aaron Dun­can, North West Laven­tille, Rik­ki Jai and Ravi B.

All of the ad­di­tions and in­no­va­tions are be­ing held against the back­drop of the sil­ver an­niver­sary of the for­ma­tion of the NCC. Pouchet al­so an­nounced that the NCC will hold its launch of Car­ni­val 2016 "pub­lic bash" in Oc­to­ber at the Sa­van­nah.