It has been a long time com­ing, but fi­nal­ly, there is a per­ma­nent home for the var­i­ous el­e­ments of T&T’s Car­ni­val.

Any­one in­ter­est­ed in learn­ing about the his­to­ry and evo­lu­tion of this coun­try’s biggest cul­tur­al fes­ti­val can vis­it the new­ly opened Car­ni­val Mu­se­um lo­cat­ed at 81 Char­lotte Street, Port-of-Spain.

Un­til now, apart from a small col­lec­tion of cos­tumes and archival ma­te­r­i­al at the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um and Art Gallery, there was lit­tle on dis­play any­where on these twin is­lands to back up claims that our pre-Lenten fes­ti­val is the Great­est Show on Earth.

That is a griev­ous short­com­ing when one con­sid­ers that T&T Car­ni­val, which has evolved to in­clude the unique, wide­ly ac­claimed com­po­nents of steel­pan, ca­lyp­so, so­ca and chut­ney, is more than two cen­turies old.

The T&T Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) and the Car­ni­val In­sti­tute of T&T (CITT) are to be com­mend­ed for show­ing some ini­tia­tive when First Cit­i­zens called for pro­pos­als for the use and re­pur­pos­ing of the for­mer lo­ca­tion of the Trinidad Co-op­er­a­tive Bank, more pop­u­lar­ly known as The Pen­ny Bank.

The re­sult is that a fa­cil­i­ty lo­cat­ed in a his­toric build­ing, once a hub of bank­ing ac­tiv­i­ty, has been trans­formed in­to a cen­tre of cul­ture and art. Fi­nal­ly, a re­al ef­fort is be­ing made lo­cal­ly to dis­play and pre­serve his­tor­i­cal doc­u­men­ta­tion, im­ages, art, mu­sic, film, in­stru­ments, cos­tumes, cul­tur­al arte­facts and in­for­ma­tion.

At present, vis­i­tors can view a tem­po­rary ex­hi­bi­tion of pho­tos, cloth­ing from ca­lyp­so greats, tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val cos­tumes and al­bums. How­ev­er, as the site is de­vel­oped, there will be much more to see at the mu­se­um, in rooms which are ded­i­cat­ed to mas, pan, ca­lyp­so and so­ca mu­sic, in­clud­ing class­es and demon­stra­tions of these var­i­ous art forms.

TTC­BA and CITT of­fi­cials should tap in­to the ex­per­tise of re­searchers like re­tired Alaskan judge Ray Funk, who has chan­nelled his more than two decades of knowl­edge and pas­sion for T&T Car­ni­val in­to ar­ti­cles on ca­lyp­so, steel­pan and mas, as well as lec­tures at schools, uni­ver­si­ties and li­braries.

With the es­tab­lish­ment of the Car­ni­val Mu­se­um, fi­nal­ly, all the talk and promis­es of a fa­cil­i­ty ded­i­cat­ed to this coun­try’s in­dige­nous art forms have be­come a re­al­i­ty. How­ev­er, it is just the first step. In the quest to make the car­ni­val in­dus­try a ma­jor pil­lar of a fu­ture di­ver­si­fied T&T econ­o­my, a pro­pos­al de­vel­oped dur­ing the last Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion for a Na­tion­al Car­ni­val and En­ter­tain­ment Cen­tre at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah should be re­vis­it­ed.

The plan was for a state-of-the-art, lo­cal­ly de­signed fa­cil­i­ty that, along with the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA), would trans­form north Port-of-Spain in­to a cul­tur­al and art dis­trict.

Al­though NA­PA was even­tu­al­ly con­struct­ed, the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val and En­ter­tain­ment Cen­tre is yet to be made a re­al­i­ty. In­stead, the an­nu­al Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions are held at the Grand Stand, where much of the in­fra­struc­ture is as­sem­bled and dis­man­tled every year at a cost to tax­pay­ers.

Af­ter years of more lip ser­vice than a com­mit­ment to the con­cept of T&T as the birth­place of Caribbean-style Car­ni­val, it is time to seize the op­por­tu­ni­ty and de­vel­op per­ma­nent fa­cil­i­ties for var­i­ous as­pects of the fes­ti­val.

On­ly then can this coun­try tru­ly lay claim to be­ing the home of the Great­est Show on Earth.