The Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) launched its first “Sa­van­nah Talks” de­signed to give TTC­BA mem­bers di­rect ac­cess to in­dus­try lead­ers, in­for­ma­tion, and net­works on top­ics they pri­ori­tise for their de­vel­op­ment. The goal is to em­pow­er mem­bers with tools and in­sights to ad­vance their busi­ness­es in a way that is clear, prac­ti­cal, and ac­tion­able.

The Sa­van­nah Talks se­ries was cre­at­ed by Valmi­ki Ma­haraj, TTC­BA Pub­lic Re­la­tions Di­rec­tor and board mem­ber. Ma­haraj said he joined the as­so­ci­a­tion to gain knowl­edge and, through learn­ing, to dri­ve change. He ex­plained, “Speak­ing to oth­er mem­bers, I re­alised that what they want­ed more than any­thing was ac­ces­si­ble op­por­tu­ni­ties to learn and grow their bands and that’s where Sa­van­nah Talks was born. It is de­signed as a fa­mil­iar space where every­one can feel com­fort­able and un­der­stand…ses­sions are camp­fire style set up with in­vit­ed speak­ers on clear and sim­ple top­ics, and ref­er­ences to em­pow­er at­ten­dees.”

Forty-five TTC­BA mem­bers reg­is­tered for the first ses­sion, which fo­cused on the top­ic of Spon­sor­ship and Brand Part­ner­ship. The ses­sion fea­tured brand and spon­sor­ship con­sul­tant Jus­tine Low, Antron Forte, Head of Brand Mar­ket­ing at CARIB Brew­ery, and Leah Marsang, Sales and Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er at Smith Robert­son Co. Ltd. TTC­BA Pres­i­dent Mark Ayen spoke at the event, em­pha­sis­ing that the as­so­ci­a­tion’s goals were be­ing re­alised by el­e­vat­ing them­selves as Mas pro­fes­sion­als and ad­vanc­ing their in­dus­try through ini­tia­tives like this.

Ma­haraj an­nounced the sec­ond ses­sion of Sa­van­nah Talks will cov­er Mar­ket­ing, Strat­e­gy, and So­cial Me­dia. He hopes the next ses­sion will help the com­mu­ni­ty nav­i­gate this side of their busi­ness more ef­fec­tive­ly and ex­pand their reach lo­cal­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.