Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Par­ty in a pod, any­one?

That’s the for­mat the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion will be us­ing for its up­com­ing ‘Taste of Car­ni­val’ event.

There will be two pod sizes; one that will ac­com­mo­date six peo­ple and an­oth­er that can hold up to nine pa­trons.

“It will not be like six peo­ple come through the gate and we put you in a pod. You come with your crew of six and you all are in that pod,” ac­cord­ing to NCC com­mis­sion­er, Dar­i­an Mar­celle.

Four ideas were pitched to the gov­ern­ment and even­tu­al­ly re­fined to the pod for­mat.

“This whole idea of the pod is not unique to us. It is the tem­plate that peo­ple around the world are us­ing”, NCC chair­man Win­ston ‘Gyp­sy’ Pe­ters said while speak­ing at a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

The me­dia was giv­en a tour of the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah where the struc­tures are be­ing erect­ed.

It is one of three venues the NCC will be us­ing to host events.

The oth­ers are Queen’s Hall and Na­pari­ma Bowl.

“The on­ly rea­son why this is be­ing kept here is be­cause it is a des­ig­nat­ed safe zone and is des­ig­nat­ed for vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons on­ly. All our events are for vac­ci­nat­ed per­sons on­ly and all the venues that they’re go­ing to be held at, are des­ig­nat­ed safe zones,” Pe­ters ex­plained.

He warned that there will be many se­cu­ri­ty and com­pli­ance and po­lice of­fi­cers on-site for each event.

“Do not spend your mon­ey to come in here to be ar­rest­ed be­cause you have a false cer­tifi­cate or some­thing and we have means of check­ing,” Pe­ters warned.

He af­firmed that the NCC has the ut­most faith in pa­trons be­ing re­spon­si­ble and ad­her­ing to the pub­lic health pro­to­cols to en­sure safe and suc­cess­ful shows.

“Yes, we will wine be­cause that is our thing and noth­ing is wrong with that, so, we will wine and jump but we know we have to do it in a cer­tain way and we will,” ac­cord­ing to Pe­ters.

The first event will be held vir­tu­al­ly on Feb­ru­ary 4, 2021.

“It’s go­ing to start on the 4th with the first Ca­lyp­so show be­ing a vir­tu­al show and af­ter that, the Ca­lyp­so tents are go­ing to be open in full on the 11th,” Pe­ters an­nounced.

As for the in-per­son shows, Mar­celle said ven­dors will be avail­able at all three sites, how­ev­er, pa­trons will on­ly be al­lowed to eat and drink in their pods. You can al­so bring your own food and drinks.

The bud­get for the events will be be­tween $25 and $30 mil­lion.

Many of the shows will be paid events.

Asked whether the shows will be live-streamed, Pe­ters said, “Most of our events are go­ing to be streamed but, I don’t know if they will be streamed live now or record­ed to be streamed at a next time. But you will ap­pre­ci­ate the fact that they’re all paid events, they’re not free events at all. One or two might be.”

He al­so con­firmed that sev­er­al pri­vate pro­mot­ers had ap­proached the NCC to host events but could not con­firm how ad­vanced the dis­cus­sions have reached.

“We have to go through all the Min­istry of Health, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty so, we have to do all that in or­der to do what we are do­ing here and if they want to do pri­vate events on their own then I guess they will have to do the same thing. If they want to have it in our space then they will have to come to us, be­cause this des­ig­nat­ed a safe space, they will have to op­er­ate un­der the same con­di­tion that ex­ists for us,” Pe­ters ex­plained.

“They could have their event but of course, we will have to man­age the fa­cil­i­ty,” Mar­celle added.

Mar­celle said the NCC had been work­ing very hard all of last year to plan for Car­ni­val 2022 as such, once per­mis­sion was grant­ed by the gov­ern­ment, he said, “it wasn’t that dif­fi­cult to come up with this op­tion that we have”.

He not­ed that Mas, Pan, Ca­lyp­so and oth­er in­ter­est groups have played an in­te­gral role in the cre­ation of their show style.

Mean­while, speak­ing on CNC3’s ‘The Morn­ing Brew’ pro­gramme yes­ter­day, Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent, Bev­er­ly Ram­sey-Moore said they had not yet con­firmed any ‘Taste of Car­ni­val’ events for To­ba­go due to the low rate of vac­ci­na­tion among pan play­ers on the is­land.

“We are hav­ing some se­ri­ous chal­lenges here in To­ba­go with the un­vaxxed and by Wednes­day we will be able to say whether we are hav­ing the show in To­ba­go,” Ram­sey-Moore lament­ed.

For those of you who look for­ward to the days off on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day, the NCC chair­man re­mind­ed that those days are not of­fi­cial pub­lic hol­i­days.