Soyi­ni Grey

The Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion has an­nounced the start of plans for the Road to Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val 2023. The com­mis­sion put the pub­lic on alert yes­ter­day, af­ter it up­dat­ed its so­cial me­dia chan­nels and web­site with a ban­ner an­nounce­ment but no fur­ther state­ment was is­sued.

How­ev­er, a source told Guardian Me­dia that NCC’s man­age­ment re­alised af­ter meet­ing that it could not walk back on “A Taste of Car­ni­val 2022.”

The clear im­pli­ca­tion, the source said, was that af­ter this year’s ex­pe­ri­ence with safe zone con­certs and no in­crease in COVID-19 case num­bers or hos­pi­tal en­roll­ment, de­spite con­cerns through­out this sea­son about safe­ty breach­es at events, a fuller Car­ni­val ex­pe­ri­ence is pos­si­ble in a year’s time.

When con­tact­ed for com­ment on this yes­ter­day, Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell was quick to clar­i­fy that this was not an of­fi­cial launch. Rather, he said it is a sig­nalling of in­ten­tion by the com­mis­sion.

Mitchell said the NCC had re­alised that it takes a full year to plan for Car­ni­val and it was nec­es­sary to let stake­hold­ers know that the time was right to start plan­ning for a re­turn to the road.

“But it is not to say that that road would not be fraught with ob­sta­cles, but the road be­gins,” he said.

“And Car­ni­val stake­hold­ers, in­clud­ing the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion, must be­gin to pre­pare.”

How­ev­er, the min­is­ter al­so said they are prepar­ing with a close eye on the COVID-19 in­fec­tion rate, pay­ing spe­cial at­ten­tion to the hos­pi­tal ad­mis­sions and death rate.

Mean­while, sev­er­al stake­hold­ers have al­ready made their own an­nounce­ments that they were ex­pect­ing a re­turn to nor­mal next year. The Tribe Group has al­ready sold out pre-book­ing for peo­ple who played with their var­i­ous bands in 2020. It has since an­nounced phase two of cos­tume reg­is­tra­tion will open to the pub­lic in Ju­ly/Au­gust. On March 4, Yu­ma re­leased a cos­tume teas­er de­signed by David Dew­er with the promise “Yu­ma Car­ni­val 2023 is go­ing to be a movie!!”

Yu­ma head of cos­tume pro­duc­tion, Tanya Gomes, yes­ter­day said their cos­tume pro­duc­tion busi­ness nev­er re­al­ly stopped. They have pro­duced cos­tumes for Mi­a­mi Car­ni­val 2021 and while their eyes are look­ing at 2023, they still have to re­lease a theme.

“2022 is be­fore that, so we still have St Lu­cia, we still have to launch our band in Grena­da; which is a new band, and we al­so have talks where Japan is con­cerned,” Gomes said.

Gomes al­so said Ja­maica is still con­sid­er­ing whether or not they will be hav­ing a Car­ni­val lat­er on this year and if the an­swer is yes, Yu­ma may be in­volved.

How­ev­er, Gomes said they are be­ing very cau­tious with their plan­ning, while keep­ing a close eye on the pro­gres­sion of the COVID-19 dis­ease. She said al­though they very much want to be on the road with a full band, they have to be guid­ed by the Min­istry of Health’s num­bers.

This sen­ti­ment was echoed by the chair­man of the Pres­tige Past Stu­dent Foun­da­tion, Steven Sam­lals­ingh. On Thurs­day morn­ing (March 10), their PRES­Tige fete page on Face­book was up­dat­ed with a date place hold­er, re­mind­ing cus­tomers of the date for the 2023 edi­tion of the fete. Sam­lals­ingh said they have been pay­ing at­ten­tion to the num­bers and the state­ment of the Prime Min­is­ter, who has said that the virus seems to have tran­si­tioned in­to the en­dem­ic stage, and there­fore, the foun­da­tion felt that it was a good time to let the pub­lic know that if Car­ni­val is on, they will be ready.

The school fete is a main­stay on the Car­ni­val sched­ule of events and is of­ten the biggest fundrais­er for the school for the year, which would have mo­ti­vat­ed an ea­ger­ness to re­turn. He said the NCC’s up­date made them feel “vin­di­cat­ed” in shar­ing their save the date, not­ing on­ly the St Mary’s Col­lege Past Stu­dents Union, or­gan­is­ers of Fete With the Saints, al­so known as CIC Fete, beat them by post­ing their no­tice on March 8.

Sam­lals­ingh said the NCC state­ment means that now, they will have to move very quick­ly to meet with sup­pli­ers to get plan­ning for PRES­tige go­ing for the ac­tu­al event, since it is now even more like­ly that it will hap­pen. The sup­pli­ers too are hap­py about the an­nounce­ment. While the event is a ma­jor fundrais­er for the schools, a lot of down­stream in­dus­tries ben­e­fit fi­nan­cial­ly from these fetes, and Sam­lals­ingh said many of those peo­ple are be­ing con­tact­ed al­ready, which is “a good sign.”

Apart from their dig­i­tal com­mu­ni­ca­tion up­date, the NCC has not said any­thing more on The Road to Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val 2023.

How­ev­er, prin­ci­pal pub­li­cist at Cham­bers Me­dia So­lu­tions, Te­nille Clarke, is cau­tion­ing the body to make sure that their plan­ning and lo­gis­tics, for what may be the biggest Car­ni­val in mod­ern times, is on point. Clarke yes­ter­day said not on­ly does Trinidad and To­ba­go have to show the world why we are the “Great­est Show on Earth,” but why our Car­ni­val “is re­spon­si­ble for the spawn­ing of over 300 Car­ni­val it­er­a­tions through­out the world.”

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