So far two car­ni­val or­ga­ni­za­tions have in­di­cat­ed that their events for Car­ni­val 2021 have been post­poned.

The Trini­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans Or­ga­ni­za­tion and the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion have both ad­mit­ted that COVID19 has ground­ed tra­di­tion­al car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ear­li­er this year, for­mer Cul­ture Min­is­ter Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly stat­ed as the coun­try was now grap­pling with the COVID19 pan­dem­ic that car­ni­val 2021 will not be can­celled.

With the Health Min­istry sta­tis­tics TU­CO Pres­i­dent Lu­ta­lo Masim­ba told the Trinidad Guardian, his or­ga­ni­za­tion has adapt­ed to a vir­tu­al set­ting and will use next month Ca­lyp­so His­to­ry events to test in prepa­ra­tions for vir­tu­al ca­lyp­so events in 2021.

“We are propos­ing a post­pone­ment for lat­er in the year per­haps in June month of 2021 be­cause as far as we are con­cerned as an or­ga­ni­za­tion are the health and safe­ty of the pa­trons com­ing to our events, and to have a good Car­ni­val it is more than just a vi­su­al, there is a feel­ing, a move­ment, a vi­bra­tion that goes through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go”, he said, “to have that ex­pe­ri­ence it will be very dif­fi­cult to get that in the vir­tu­al show­case but this is the time we are liv­ing in.”

He adds TU­CO is prepar­ing to do a vir­tu­al show­case for car­ni­val 2021 which will be used as a pro­mo­tion at a lat­er date in the year. This is how we are think­ing as an or­ga­ni­za­tion go­ing for­ward.

Al­ready, some na­tion­al events were can­celled or had to be retro­fit­ted with­in the Pub­lic Health pro­to­col for COVID19.

Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion Pres­i­dent David Lopez told the Trinidad Guardian that Trinidad and To­ba­go missed a bul­let in 2020 Car­ni­val and thank God for that, in terms of go­ing for­ward for Car­ni­val 2021, we don’t see car­ni­val hap­pen­ing in 2021 and prob­a­bly in a lit­tle while to come still so the whole game has changed.

“In 2009, the NC­BA had built a Car­ni­val Man­age­ment sys­tem which was to man­age all the events on­line and some mem­bers was up­set about that but we still had our sys­tem in place and mem­bers of Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion did not em­brace it but with the pan­dem­ic this is what we all have to use now”, Mr Lopez said, “So what I think what we have to do is to de­vel­op how we pro­duce and do vir­tu­al com­pe­ti­tion hence­forth.”

He added, that now he can say that he was see­ing in the fu­ture but once you are lead­ing an or­gan­i­sa­tion you must have a vi­sion to want to take things in a dif­fer­ent di­rec­tion you can­not just want to come in­to an or­gan­i­sa­tion and sit down and just wait, our chal­lenge is that the NC­BA is that we know that the Gov­ern­ment can­not and would not be able to con­tin­ue to put the kind of mon­ey that they put in Car­ni­val and what is sad about this is that the mon­ey that is al­lo­cat­ed to Car­ni­val does not come di­rect­ly to us but the sup­pli­ers and ser­vice providers.

“It gives us a chance and I hope we don’t miss the boat but this sit­u­a­tion al­lows us to re­or­gan­ise and repack­age and to un­der­stand what we want our lin­eage car­ni­val be­cause I have been around the world for car­ni­vals and for ex­am­ple, Grena­da has brand­ed their car­ni­val”, he said.