Soyi­ni Grey

Se­nior Pro­duc­er

soyi­ni.grey@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment is be­ing called up­on to en­gage in di­a­logue with pro­mot­ers be­fore mak­ing last­ing de­ci­sions about Car­ni­val 2026.

Kwe­si Hop­kin­son, own­er of the En­ter­tain­ment brand Scorch, which held its fete, First Jam, in the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah (QPS) on New Year’s Day, yes­ter­day said while they do not yet have fi­nal fig­ures, ini­tial es­ti­mates are that there was a re­duc­tion in the num­ber of peo­ple who at­tend­ed as com­pared to last year.

He said the event typ­i­cal­ly at­tracts 3,500-4,000 peo­ple, but the con­ver­sa­tion gen­er­at­ed by news about the re­stric­tions on venues had al­so cre­at­ed un­cer­tain­ty among the fete­ing pub­lic.

Hop­kin­son said peo­ple are mak­ing de­ci­sions lat­er than usu­al, with same-day pur­chas­es on the rise. This, he ex­plained, al­so had a neg­a­tive ef­fect on event plan­ning.

As an event pro­mot­er, Hop­kin­son said the Sa­van­nah is an ide­al event space.

“I love the Sa­van­nah lo­gis­tic-wise, and every­thing is per­fect,” he said.

“Traf­fic man­age­ment and all, you in and out the Sa­van­nah in ten min­utes and 15 min­utes max, so there’s no set of traf­fic when it comes to the Sa­van­nah and hold­ing large events there.”

But he said it is the on­ly space of its kind lo­cal­ly.

Hop­kin­son said while the Gov­ern­ment bears the in­fra­struc­tur­al load of prepar­ing for Car­ni­val, for the most part, it is the pri­vate sec­tor that re­al­ly pow­ers Car­ni­val.

And it is for that rea­son he is call­ing for reg­u­lar and con­tin­u­ous di­a­logue be­tween the pub­lic and the pri­vate sec­tor as it re­lates to the busi­ness of Car­ni­val.

Mean­while, Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) chair­man Pe­ter Kan­hai is look­ing to­wards his first Car­ni­val very en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, he said the QPS is ready to host ma­jor events, as it has in the past.

“At NCC, we are cre­at­ing the spaces that pro­mot­ers can use. And a lot of events out­side the tra­di­tion­al events: the Panora­ma and the ca­lyp­so, so on, take place there. The Army Fete and oth­er events, there’s been Kes (IzWe), Voice (Vibes With Voicey) and so on. So, there have been ad­di­tion­al re­quests, and we are treat­ing with those as best as we can, giv­en the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion re­stric­tions of venues and so on,” Kan­hai said.

Kan­hai is al­so fo­cused on val­ue for mon­ey. He said NCC plans to broad­en the use of the North Stand at the QPS be­yond Panora­ma and en­cour­age more events that can use that struc­ture.

“We are look­ing to change that and bring peo­ple back to the North Stand even for the Di­marche Gras, so we are putting for­ward plans, sug­ges­tions and pro­pos­als as to how we do that.”

He said the aim is to en­sure “prop­er use is made of ex­pen­di­ture that it is to put up the North Stand and so on.”

Al­so ad­dress­ing the is­sue, how­ev­er, for­mer Min­is­ter of Cul­ture, Tourism and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell said the Sa­van­nah can­not be ex­pect­ed to fill the void cre­at­ed by the to­tal ban on events like con­certs and par­ties in the var­i­ous venues across the coun­try. He said in the first in­stance, it cen­tralis­es Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ty in Port-of-Spain.

“What this pol­i­cy shift ac­tu­al­ly does is to shrink the avail­able cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic space for Car­ni­val: few­er events, few­er venues, few­er nights of ac­tiv­i­ty, few­er per­form­ers, few­er ven­dors, few­er tech­ni­cians, and ul­ti­mate­ly few­er op­por­tu­ni­ties for the thou­sands of peo­ple whose liveli­hoods de­pend on the sea­son in­clud­ing work­ers, event pro­mot­ers, and artistes.”

Sec­ond­ly, Mitchell said the Sa­van­nah sim­ply can­not ab­sorb all of the events ren­dered home­less by Gov­ern­ment’s ban.

“The QPS is an im­por­tant and icon­ic venue, but it can­not, by ge­og­ra­phy or by de­sign, re­place the oth­er event spaces that pre­vi­ous­ly sup­port­ed Car­ni­val events across the coun­try,” he said.