The Lost Tribe has com­plet­ed the sec­ond edi­tion of Car­ni­val Cam­pus, an in­ten­sive train­ing pro­gramme aimed at equip­ping emerg­ing de­sign­ers, ar­ti­sans and pro­duc­tion spe­cial­ists with the skills need­ed to build ca­reers in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s cre­ative in­dus­tries.

Held at the Tribe Mas Camp from Sep­tem­ber 28 to Oc­to­ber 9, the 12-day pro­gramme brought to­geth­er 39 par­tic­i­pants for prac­ti­cal train­ing in cos­tume de­sign, con­struc­tion and pro­duc­tion, along­side work­shops on the com­mer­cial re­al­i­ties of the Car­ni­val in­dus­try.

Op­er­at­ing un­der the theme of “In­come Earn­ing Learn­ing”, Car­ni­val Cam­pus seeks to bridge the gap be­tween cre­ative tal­ent and pro­fes­sion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties by pro­vid­ing par­tic­i­pants with tech­ni­cal knowl­edge and an un­der­stand­ing of how to turn their skills in­to sus­tain­able ca­reers.

The hy­brid cur­ricu­lum com­bined prac­ti­cal stu­dio ses­sions with the­o­ret­i­cal in­struc­tion, cov­er­ing eight core class­es, in­clud­ing wire-bend­ing, feath­er­work, back­pack de­sign, de­sign­ing for dif­fer­ent body types and ma­te­r­i­al se­lec­tion.

Par­tic­i­pants al­so at­tend­ed spe­cialised work­shops on de­sign­ing for men, tra­di­tion­al mas and beau­ty in mas.

The pro­gramme was de­signed to im­merse par­tic­i­pants in the cre­ative process from the out­set, with live sketch­ing, dec­o­rat­ing and foun­da­tion­al the­o­ry in­tro­duced from the first day.

Train­ing was led by es­tab­lished in­dus­try de­sign­ers and vet­er­an ar­ti­sans, in­clud­ing Valmi­ki Ma­haraj, Solange Govia, Re­nee Pouchet, Shawn Dhan­raj and At­i­ba Bor­de.

Ac­cess to spe­cialised train­ing was al­so sup­port­ed through spon­sor­ships. Three cre­atives re­ceived full fund­ing to par­tic­i­pate in mas­ter­class­es led by Govia: Moni­fah Richard­son, spon­sored by Govia; Raquel Heer­ah, spon­sored by In­dus­try 360; and An­to­nio Pere­lion, spon­sored by Ge­off Coop­er, al­so known as Sagaboi.

Car­ni­val Cam­pus al­so pro­vid­ed di­rect spon­sor­ships to a se­lect num­ber of oth­er stu­dents.

Be­yond the prac­ti­cal train­ing, par­tic­i­pants ex­plored the busi­ness and pro­fes­sion­al chal­lenges fac­ing the Car­ni­val sec­tor through four pan­el dis­cus­sions.

A ses­sion on in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, led by Clover Con­sul­tan­cy, ex­am­ined copy­right, de­sign pro­tec­tion and own­er­ship in the cre­ative arts, while “The Mon­day Blue­print” brought to­geth­er Lau­ra Narayans­ingh, Nico­lette Lea­cock and Keisha Als to dis­cuss the de­sign and lo­gis­ti­cal de­mands of Mon­day wear.

The “Women in Mas” dis­cus­sion ex­am­ined lead­er­ship, rep­re­sen­ta­tion and cre­ative di­rec­tion, with con­tri­bu­tions from Govia, Marieange Bovell, Rhi­an­non Pem­ber­ton and Tanya Gomes, di­rec­tor at YU­MA Car­ni­val.

The ses­sion al­so cre­at­ed op­por­tu­ni­ties for di­a­logue and col­lab­o­ra­tion across Car­ni­val bands and or­gan­i­sa­tions.

The fourth dis­cus­sion, “Home Grown Brands”, fo­cused on cre­ative en­tre­pre­neur­ship, fea­tur­ing Antron Forte, Kei­ba Ja­cob-Mot­t­ley and Danielle Bou­caud-Hen­rique.

For Ma­haraj, band­leader of THE LOST TRIBE and cre­ative di­rec­tor of TRIBE Group, the pro­gramme rep­re­sents an in­vest­ment in the fu­ture of mas and the peo­ple who will shape its evo­lu­tion.

“Car­ni­val Cam­pus is about trans­lat­ing raw pas­sion in­to sus­tain­able ca­reers,” he said.

“Over 12 days, this co­hort showed re­mark­able dis­ci­pline, re­spect for her­itage tech­niques, and an ap­petite for in­no­va­tion. Mas can­not sur­vive on nos­tal­gia alone; it re­quires an ac­tive, pro­fes­sion­al tal­ent pipeline. See­ing these Cam­pus stu­dents evolve gives me im­mense con­fi­dence in the fu­ture of our in­dus­try.”

The pro­gramme’s next phase will fo­cus on con­nect­ing par­tic­i­pants with em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties. Or­gan­is­ers are eval­u­at­ing can­di­dates for po­ten­tial place­ment with­in Tribe Group for the up­com­ing Car­ni­val sea­son, with roles ex­pect­ed to re­flect their in­di­vid­ual skills, ar­eas of spe­cial­i­sa­tion and avail­abil­i­ty.

Po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties in­clude cos­tume con­struc­tion, de­sign as­sis­tance, camp man­age­ment and pro­duc­tion lo­gis­tics, al­low­ing par­tic­i­pants to ap­ply their train­ing in a pro­fes­sion­al set­ting.

For co­hort par­tic­i­pant Ka­ri­na Ram­nath, the ex­pe­ri­ence of­fered an op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn from es­tab­lished prac­ti­tion­ers while build­ing con­nec­tions with oth­er cre­atives.

“Car­ni­val Cam­pus was a whirl­wind ad­ven­ture in­to the art and busi­ness of Mas,” she said. “The class­es, pan­els, and work­shops taught by in­dus­try lead­ers of­fered in­valu­able in­sight in­to the Car­ni­val ecosys­tem. It was tru­ly in­spir­ing to be among fel­low cre­atives learn­ing, dream­ing, and grow­ing. The knowl­edge gained will be used to con­tribute to the art form in my coun­try.”

With two co­horts now com­plet­ed in Port-of-Spain, or­gan­is­ers are as­sess­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to ex­pand the Car­ni­val Cam­pus mod­el in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. Pro­posed ini­tia­tives could in­clude hy­brid pro­grammes con­nect­ing cre­atives in the di­as­po­ra with train­ing ground­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Car­ni­val tra­di­tions.

The sec­ond co­hort was sup­port­ed by Aven­ta, An­hasi Con­tract­ing Ser­vices Ltd, Co­ca-Co­la, Dasani, Nestlé, Sun­shine Snacks, Revlon and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try.