Win­ner of the Car­ni­val Large Band of the Year, 2025, The Lost Tribe, has opened Car­ni­val Cam­pus, a pro­gramme aimed at ed­u­cat­ing young­sters in the busi­ness of Car­ni­val and po­ten­tial­ly re­duc­ing for­eign ex­change use with­in the Car­ni­val sec­tor.

In a me­dia state­ment, The Lost Tribe said, “This pro­gramme will not on­ly sup­port lo­cal pro­duc­ers in find­ing em­ploy­ment with­in Trinidad and To­ba­go but al­so open doors for op­por­tu­ni­ties in oth­er re­gion­al Car­ni­vals. The in­creased lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty will al­so ben­e­fit Car­ni­val bands by re­duc­ing their de­pen­dence on for­eign pro­duc­ers, there­by sav­ing valu­able for­eign ex­change.”

“Car­ni­val Cam­pus is a vi­tal step to­wards se­cur­ing the fu­ture of mas pro­duc­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said band leader and cre­ative di­rec­tor Valmi­ki Ma­haraj.

“By in­vest­ing in our lo­cal tal­ent, we are not on­ly em­pow­er­ing in­di­vid­u­als with valu­able skills but al­so strength­en­ing our cul­tur­al her­itage and re­duc­ing our re­liance on ex­ter­nal re­sources. This pro­gramme will en­sure that the artistry and crafts­man­ship of Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val is nur­tured, de­vel­oped and re­tained for decades and cen­turies to come,” he said.

The train­ing and de­vel­op­ment pro­gramme of­fi­cial­ly opened its doors on Tues­day.

Un­der the pro­gramme, trainees are be­ing taught to hone their skills in mas-mak­ing and the busi­ness as­pects of the fes­ti­val.

The mas band ex­plained that the vol­ume of work at the mo­ment is be­yond the cur­rent lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty, and as such, this ini­tia­tive was cre­at­ed.

The Lost Tribe said in the me­dia re­lease, “Trinidad and To­ba­go boasts the largest Car­ni­val in the Caribbean, with a mas­sive vol­ume of mas­quer­aders and nu­mer­ous Car­ni­val bands. The unique Trinidad and To­ba­go style of Car­ni­val has gained in­ter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion, in­flu­enc­ing cel­e­bra­tions from Mi­a­mi to Tokyo. The TRIBE Group alone caters to over 15,000 mas­quer­aders across its four Car­ni­val bands an­nu­al­ly, re­quir­ing the in­tri­cate pro­duc­tion of thou­sands of mul­ti-com­po­nent cos­tumes. De­spite a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of pro­duc­tion re­main­ing lo­cal, the sheer scale presents chal­lenges, of­ten ne­ces­si­tat­ing out­sourc­ing to for­eign pro­duc­ers.”

Ma­haraj said the band is aim­ing to bol­ster lo­cal ca­pac­i­ty in Car­ni­val cos­tume pro­duc­tion, ad­dress­ing the crit­i­cal need for skilled ar­ti­sans in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s thriv­ing Car­ni­val in­dus­try.

The first edi­tion of Car­ni­val Cam­pus is a ten-day in­cu­ba­tor pro­gramme de­signed to fa­cil­i­tate the cru­cial trans­fer­ence of knowl­edge from sea­soned mas-mak­ing vet­er­ans to a new gen­er­a­tion of pro­duc­ers, the re­lease ex­plained.

The Cam­pus, the Lost Tribe said, will specif­i­cal­ly fo­cus on spe­cialised skills like feath­er­work and wire bend­ing.