Ris­ing num­bers of COVID-19 cas­es has left many in­dus­tries reel­ing, but none may have been worse af­fect­ed than those who have hung their liveli­hood on the Car­ni­val in­dus­try.

In their first quar­ter fi­nan­cial re­ports com­pa­nies such as Wit­co, Pres­tige, An­gos­tu­ra, One Caribbean Me­dia and Guardian Me­dia Ltd have re­port­ed re­duced in­comes for the pe­ri­od and at­trib­uted it to the ab­sence of the Car­ni­val pe­ri­od.

In one in­stance, An­gos­tu­ra avoid­ed greater dips in rev­enue due to the ab­sence of Car­ni­val by cut­ting back on the mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tions they would have usu­al­ly done dur­ing the sea­son.

How­ev­er, the dev­as­ta­tion for those di­rect­ly in­volved is im­mense.

“It would un­doubt­ed­ly rep­re­sent a mas­sive loss not on­ly to the Car­ni­val in­dus­try but to the na­tion­al econ­o­my as well,” said Ros­alind Gabriel, pres­i­dent of the T&T Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion.

“Giv­en how much the in­dus­try has al­ready been im­pact­ed, af­ter just one year can­celled, it is rea­son­able to as­sume that if Car­ni­val were can­celled again, those im­pacts would wors­en dras­ti­cal­ly un­less some­thing is done to steel the in­dus­try against that se­vere of a shock. The sense of loss is wide­spread but we have been try­ing to help our mem­bers find ac­cess to what­ev­er is avail­able by way of grants and oth­er char­i­ta­ble do­na­tions,” she said.

Many of the bands are wor­ried that they would not sur­vive an­oth­er year with­out a Car­ni­val sea­son.

“When it comes to the po­ten­tial ex­pect­ed loss­es, what par­tic­u­lar­ly keeps us up at night is the num­ber of bands that many be­lieve will not to be able to re­turn to full, or even any pro­duc­tion af­ter more than two years of lock­down,” she said.

“Due to the fact that Car­ni­val is a ma­jor in­come stream for many in the Mas com­mu­ni­ty, our most mod­est es­ti­mate is that we may lose any­where up to 35% by the sec­ond year of no Car­ni­val.”

Gabriel ex­plained that the fall­out of this year’s can­cel­la­tion con­tin­ued to re­ver­ber­ate through­out the in­dus­try.
“Many of them re­ly heav­i­ly on Car­ni­val as a source of in­come. The can­cel­la­tion has pre­sent­ed a tremen­dous set­back to them and to the in­dus­try as a whole. Some Mas camps have shut down with­out much hope of re­open­ing right away since their re­sources have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly strained, and in some cas­es, de­plet­ed,” said Gabriel

The frus­tra­tion over the sit­u­a­tion was ev­i­dent when we spoke to Ron­nie & Caro band­leader Ron­nie McIn­tosh, who was dis­pleased af­ter ini­tial progress in bring­ing down the cas­es we were now in the po­si­tion of po­ten­tial­ly can­celling the event again.

“My ques­tion is: how are we at this point again?” said McIn­tosh, “I find it sad that we at this po­si­tion again where  you call­ing me about 2022 Car­ni­val, that’s so sad. And we de­pend on this to live.”

McIn­tosh said the in­dus­try had been sur­viv­ing up to this point, with­out much help from the Gov­ern­ment as lo­cal de­sign­ers have long been in­volved in in­ter­na­tion­al events.

“A lot of the ma­jor de­sign­ers are al­ready tapped in­to Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val or are al­ready tapped in­to Cay­man Is­lands Car­ni­val which is Ju­ly 3,” he ex­plained. These events were able to go for­ward he said due to prop­er struc­ture and plan­ning go­ing in­to their vac­ci­na­tion ef­fort, some­thing which he could not say about our ef­fort.

His fear, he told Guardian Me­dia, was that an­oth­er vari­ant could be in­tro­duced cre­at­ing an­oth­er spike, plac­ing Car­ni­val 2022 in fur­ther jeop­ardy.

The longer plans for Car­ni­val re­mains un­cer­tain, the less like­ly Car­ni­val as we have come to know it, can come to be.

Gabriel es­ti­mates that most band lead­ers would need to know by June to get them­selves in prop­er gear, while cos­tume de­sign­ers and pro­duc­ers told Guardian Me­dia that if an an­nounce­ment came as late as No­vem­ber it would be near im­pos­si­ble for a medi­um band to large bands to put to­geth­er a pre­sen­ta­tion re­sem­bling their of­fer­ings in re­cent years.

Valmi­ki Ma­haraj of Lost Tribe was a lit­tle more op­ti­mistic that some­thing could be put to­geth­er even with a late con­fir­ma­tion.

“We would sup­port them at any point. Call to ac­tion is the na­ture of our busi­ness. But the prod­uct will take form based on the time and re­sources avail­able,” he said.

Ma­haraj said the cre­ative com­mu­ni­ty had suf­fered great­ly with the can­cel­la­tion but had start­ed show­ing some signs of nec­es­sary adap­tion dur­ing the pe­ri­od by tap­ping in­to oth­er fields. How­ev­er he ul­ti­mate­ly agreed with Gabriel that many with­in the in­dus­try could not sur­vive an­oth­er can­cel­la­tion.

“I think it’ll be very, very, very dif­fi­cult for many peo­ple to sur­vive one year in­to a next year if there isn’t a Car­ni­val on the flip side of that. I think it pro­vides a very in­ter­est­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to be in­no­v­a­tive and try to do some­thing else to be able to fa­cil­i­tate the mar­ket be­cause no­body can­not tell me the mar­ket is not there,” he said, point­ing out the de­mand for Car­ni­val that he had seen across the di­as­po­ra.

Re­mark­ably while the cor­po­rate com­pa­nies at­trib­uted some of the loss­es to the ab­sence of Car­ni­val, the stake­hold­ers them­selves could not put a sol­id fig­ure on the over­all loss­es suf­fered as re­sult due to Car­ni­val.

“Plac­ing an ex­act dol­lar val­ue on the can­cel­la­tion’s im­pact would be ex­treme­ly dif­fi­cult to give. Fig­ures from the CSO es­ti­mate that at least US$100 mil­lion is gen­er­at­ed an­nu­al­ly from Car­ni­val. Hard­er still to es­ti­mate is the cul­tur­al and so­ci­etal im­pacts it has, and con­tin­ues to have,” said Gabriel.

The po­ten­tial for in­come from for­eign Car­ni­vals was wel­comed, but even then it was un­clear if it would any­where near the rev­enue earned in what is con­sid­ered a nor­mal year.

Ma­haraj ex­plained that the bor­der re­stric­tions would make it dif­fi­cult for de­sign­ers and pro­duc­ers to fly out to pro­duce for these Car­ni­vals as they would pre­vi­ous­ly, whilst there was al­so the pos­si­bil­i­ty that cos­tumes and de­signs which had been al­ready been cre­at­ed for can­celled Car­ni­vals last year may be used this year re­duc­ing po­ten­tial earn­ings for de­sign­ers and pro­duc­ers.

“Work­ing at in­ter­na­tion­al fes­ti­vals would help the mas fra­ter­ni­ty, but could nev­er be con­sid­ered a good enough re­place­ment for our own fes­ti­val. What’s worse, giv­en the lim­i­ta­tions and dis­rup­tions brought about by the pan­dem­ic, there isn’t that free­dom of move­ment that would make work at in­ter­na­tion­al fes­ti­vals fi­nan­cial­ly vi­able since trav­el­ling to and from would be made that much more dif­fi­cult,” said Gabriel.

Artistes like Farmer Nap­per, Iw­er George, Patrice Roberts and Ri­car­do have been fly­ing out to per­form at events. A sil­ver lin­ing which pleased McIn­tosh.

“We are sur­viv­ing with­out the help. The Car­ni­val in­dus­try is sur­viv­ing, with­out any as­sis­tance. We are sur­viv­ing thank God. We now get­ting some at­ten­tion, the lo­cal de­sign­ers are now get­ting some at­ten­tion,” he said, “I am hap­py for those artistes who could fly out and get some in­come.”