The Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) start­ed look­ing at the pos­si­bil­i­ty of host­ing Car­ni­val 2021 vir­tu­al­ly even be­fore Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the can­cel­la­tion of the event.

NCC’s CEO Col­in Lu­cas told Guardian Me­dia in an in­ter­view on Wednes­day that they could not ig­nore the rip­pling ef­fects of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and so start­ed plan­ning ear­li­er.

Lu­cas said stag­ing T&T’s first vir­tu­al Car­ni­val across the globe could come as a life­line for the com­mis­sion, which had been un­able to make a prof­it in the past sev­er­al years.

He said NCC does not make a prof­it from Car­ni­val, de­spite the mil­lions usu­al­ly in­vest­ed in it. For this year’s Car­ni­val, NCC was al­lo­cat­ed $165 mil­lion.

“NCC puts out the mon­ey. The coun­try makes mon­ey through in­vest­ments. But in a vir­tu­al frame­work, NCC stands to make a lot more mon­ey be­cause you have a lot of stream­ing rights.”

One op­tion of bring­ing the Car­ni­val vir­tu­al­ly to the world was through pay-per-view, Lu­cas said. But he added that a lot of thought will have to go in­to the mar­ket­ing of such an event in or­der to reach the de­sired au­di­ence.

“So, we had been hav­ing dis­cus­sions with some of the stake­hold­ers. We even had a cou­ple of pre­lim­i­nary dis­cus­sions with peo­ple in­volv­ing the (vir­tu­al) tech­nol­o­gy so it would not be a dif­fi­cult ramp up if and when we de­cide vir­tu­al is it.”

The NCC CEO said they had a team work­ing on a vir­tu­al pro­gramme which has al­ready been sub­mit­ted to its board. “Once we get the ac­quired ap­provals, we will go for­ward and nail down the con­fig­u­ra­tion of each of the shows.” By mid-Oc­to­ber, Lu­cas said, NCC should know which di­rec­tion it in­tends to take.

Asked how much rev­enue and for­eign ex­change NCC could gen­er­ate from this vir­tu­al Car­ni­val, Lu­cas said they had not looked at the fig­ures in any great de­tail. “This has been ex­plorato­ry so far. It’s one thing of hav­ing a Car­ni­val to show off your­self. It is quite an­oth­er thing mar­ket­ing and pre­sent­ing an in­ter­na­tion­al show that can earn for­eign ex­change be­yond peo­ple com­ing here and spend­ing mon­ey.”

He al­so did not say how much it would cost to put the vir­tu­al show to­geth­er.

“We have sub­mit­ted some­thing to the board, and some­thing is be­ing con­sid­ered at a min­is­te­r­i­al lev­el," he added.

'Nev­er waste a good cri­sis'

Claim­ing the pan­dem­ic could be a bless­ing in dis­guise for the NCC, Lu­cas said their biggest chal­lenge in host­ing a vir­tu­al event would be to en­sure the cor­rect mix of cur­rent and his­tor­i­cal im­agery and pro­gram­ming are promi­nent­ly fea­tured.

He said al­though it had been easy for some coun­tries to host vir­tu­al shows and pa­rades, it is more com­plex to prop­er­ly rep­re­sent T&T’s Car­ni­val which has his­tor­i­cal and cul­tur­al sig­nif­i­cance.

Lu­cas said the cur­rent chal­lenge in­clud­ed the fact that peo­ple can­not gath­er in groups of more than ten. He ques­tioned how can one vir­tu­al­ly pro­duce a Panora­ma, Di­manche Gras or Pa­rade of the Bands with ten or less peo­ple present.

The NCC CEO said the bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion would be to high­light as­pects of Panora­ma 2018, 2019 and 2020, than put ten steel­pan play­ers in a room to stream on­line.

“So, what­ev­er we do to rep­re­sent it we need to be clear that this is a taste…it is not the re­al thing. As great as we want it to look, we would do all with­in our pow­er to be con­cep­tu­al­ly and elec­tron­i­cal­ly sound.”

Lu­cas said the end prod­uct must be a good and com­pre­hen­sive pack­age to at­tract the eyes of the world.

T&T’s first COVID-19 case was record­ed in mid-March and the virus has since claimed more than 75 lives, with over 4,500 peo­ple be­ing test­ed pos­i­tive.

Lu­cas said, “It’s a sour taste, it’s not of our do­ing, but it has to be of our un­do­ing.”

At the end of the vir­tu­al Car­ni­val, Lu­cas is hop­ing peo­ple far and wide would ex­pe­ri­ence T&T’s unique cul­ture and food, as well as wit­ness the great­est show on earth from the com­fort of their cho­sen lo­ca­tion.

“We have five months to pre­pare if we are go­ing with the stan­dard Feb­ru­ary 15 and 16 Car­ni­val dates. But that may be some­thing we may wish to re­con­sid­er al­so. Sup­pose our mar­ket­ing in­tel­li­gence says you know, if you do this at East­er, you will have a po­ten­tial­ly big­ger view­er­ship, I am not say­ing that is the case, but we are look­ing at all av­enues be­cause there is a say­ing, nev­er waste a good cri­sis.”

Min­is­ter Hints At Car­ni­val Lat­er In 2021

Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Min­is­ter Ran­dall Mitchell said con­sid­er­a­tions will be giv­en to stag­ing Car­ni­val 2021 lat­er than Feb­ru­ary.

Fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment on Mon­day that there would be no Car­ni­val next year, Mitchell said in an in­ter­view last week that all was not lost.

He said “With the aim of gen­er­at­ing eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, con­sid­er­a­tion will be giv­en to hav­ing Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions lat­er in the year. This would al­so as­sist in re­viv­ing and re­vi­tal­is­ing the cre­ative sec­tor and all the sec­tors that sup­port this fes­ti­val and its events.”

THA: Eco­nom­ic fall­out is great

Chief Sec­re­tary of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly An­cil Den­nis said he was un­sur­prised by the PM’s an­nounce­ment.

Den­nis, how­ev­er, said “there would be some great fall­out for the is­land of To­ba­go and na­tion­al­ly, of course, be­cause there are a num­ber of ar­ti­sans, stake­hold­ers and busi­ness­es es­pe­cial­ly in the tourism and cre­ative sec­tors that de­pend on Car­ni­val. This will have sig­nif­i­cant im­pacts which has been a fea­ture of this pan­dem­ic. The eco­nom­ic fall­out is great.”

He said the THA will con­tin­ue to do what it has to.

“Where pos­si­ble we will con­tin­ue to host vir­tu­al and cul­tur­al events to con­tin­ue to show­case our nat­ur­al her­itage and cul­ture and pro­mote and mar­ket the is­land as a tourist des­ti­na­tion.”

If the cir­cum­stances im­prove, Den­nis said they “might be able to have a Car­ni­val in the lat­er part of 2021.”

He said the THA has been en­gaged in dis­cus­sions for the longest while “of hav­ing a sep­a­rate Car­ni­val, sep­a­rate and apart from the na­tion­al Car­ni­val be­cause we think there are sig­nif­i­cant ben­e­fits to be de­rived from that for To­ba­go and all its Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers.” He said this was still be­ing ironed out.

Denise Tsoi-A-Fatt-An­gus, chair­man of the To­ba­go Fes­ti­val Com­mis­sion Ltd said the can­cel­la­tion of Car­ni­val should be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for To­ba­go to take a look at the art form and cul­ture on a broad­er per­spec­tive.

“When we come back on the road for the fes­ti­val where do we want this Car­ni­val to go? What are the pos­si­bil­i­ties? Maybe it should spark some con­ver­sa­tions around all of the stake­hold­ers on a na­tion­al lev­el be­cause COVID is not go­ing to sud­den­ly dry up. It is some­thing we have to live with for at least the next two years.

“I think Car­ni­val is more than just Mon­day and Tues­day. There are op­por­tu­ni­ties to por­tray our pan, ca­lyp­soes and cos­tum­ing.”

She said Car­ni­val must now be pre­sent­ed on­line in a way that is en­ter­tain­ing and ed­u­cat­ing. Asked if host­ing Car­ni­val in such a way will mean less rev­enue for To­ba­go, Tsoi-A-Fatt-An­gus dis­agreed.

“Go­ing vir­tu­al does not mean less rev­enue. It may end up be­ing more rev­enue for us. We are hav­ing dis­cus­sions on how we re­coup on that rev­enue. I don’t want to say more. It may very well work out for all of us in the long run. If it is prop­er­ly pack­aged you don’t have to charge big mon­ey.”

The com­mis­sion has been in talks with stake­hold­ers to come up with some­thing fea­si­ble.

Hav­ing vir­tu­al­ly host­ed the To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val in Ju­ly which at­tract­ed a wide view­er­ship, Tsoi-A-Fatt-An­gus, said they will build on what they have al­ready achieved.

“I am ex­cit­ed and op­ti­mistic.”

T&T Car­ni­val can­celled in the past

Car­ni­val in T&T has been can­celled twice be­fore due to war and dis­ease.

The rev­el­ry was halt­ed dur­ing 1942-1945 as World War II con­tin­ued, and then again in 1972 when it was post­poned for three months be­cause of a po­lio out­break.

Fast-for­ward to 2020, the COVID-19 virus has crip­pled glob­al economies and claimed more than one mil­lion lives around the world.

Com­ment­ing on the ef­fect this can­cel­la­tion, his­to­ri­an Ger­ard Besson said there are tens of thou­sands of cit­i­zens who re­frain from Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties. “It is not the whole of T&T who will be af­fect­ed or put out be­cause Car­ni­val is post­poned.”

How­ev­er, he said the can­cel­la­tion would have a, “very, very bad ef­fect on a large num­ber of peo­ple who make a liv­ing dur­ing Car­ni­val.” Besson said small en­tre­pre­neurs such as street ven­dors, bar op­er­a­tors, cater­ers, truck dri­vers, se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel and crafts­men would feel the neg­a­tive ef­fects the most.

Look­ing ahead to Car­ni­val 2022, Besson pre­dict­ed, “It would be more mod­est than in the past be­cause there would be less mon­ey to throw around. The price of fetes would go down, the price of cos­tumes would go down.

"It will af­fect every­body and will have a knock-on ef­fect in fam­i­lies and so on. Car­ni­val 2022 would be far more mod­est than it has been in the past.”

Besson felt the idea of pay­ing thou­sands of dol­lars for a cos­tume would no longer be as fea­si­ble be­cause peo­ple will just not have that dis­pos­able in­come as job loss­es in­crease and pri­or­i­ties change.

Com­mend­ing the Prime Min­is­ter for his han­dling of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, Besson said, “He has done a very re­spon­si­ble job so far, so it would be ex­ceed­ing­ly ir­re­spon­si­ble if he blew it now.”