Af­ter suc­cess­ful­ly cross­ing its sec­ond hur­dle, To­ba­go Car­ni­val is now well poised to claim its unique space among West In­di­an-style fes­ti­vals.

Ear­ly in­di­ca­tors are that the 2023 edi­tion, held last week­end, was a suc­cess and there have been pos­i­tive re­views from mas­quer­aders, spec­ta­tors and the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers who took part in the three days of rev­el­ry.

It is note­wor­thy that the Di­vi­sion of Tourism, Cul­ture, An­tiq­ui­ties and Trans­porta­tion of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) was able to plan and stage the event with a bud­get of just over $12 mil­lion and while there were a few mi­nor hic­cups, the po­ten­tial of this fes­ti­val should not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed.

What is most im­por­tant is that To­ba­go Car­ni­val does not be­come a clone of the well es­tab­lished pre-Lenten T&T Car­ni­val.

Ef­forts to de­vel­op a unique event, a dis­tinc­tive brand, must be sus­tained and mar­ket­ing and pro­mo­tion­al ef­forts ac­cel­er­at­ed to en­sure these fes­tiv­i­ties se­cure a sol­id niche among the car­ni­vals staged across the Caribbean, North Amer­i­ca and Eu­rope through­out the year.

Once the mo­men­tum is main­tained, there will be a def­i­nite boost for the is­land’s tourism in­dus­try, which has been strug­gling in re­cent years.

It can­not be em­pha­sised too much that the suc­cess and growth of To­ba­go Car­ni­val re­quires that it re­tains a unique flavour dis­tinct and apart from T&T Car­ni­val.

So, while there are some tra­di­tion­al Car­ni­val events in com­mon with the big­ger, well es­tab­lished T&T fes­tiv­i­ties, such as J'ou­vert and a Pa­rade of the Bands, there are oth­er at­trac­tions unique to the To­ba­go edi­tion, in­clud­ing the To­ba­go So­ca Ti­tans Com­pe­ti­tion, which, giv­en time, can evolve in­to ma­jor at­trac­tions.

In ad­di­tion, dis­tinc­tive el­e­ments can be added to events such as Pan Trin­ba­go’s Rhythm, Steel and Pow­der and the TU­CO Leg­ends Show­case that can set them apart from the ver­sions in Trinidad.

How­ev­er, the of­fer of sup­port from the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) in the plan­ning and stag­ing the event should be se­ri­ous­ly con­sid­ered by the Di­vi­sion dur­ing these cru­cial ear­ly years of de­vel­op­ing the event.

NCC chair­man Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, who has long shared a dream of To­ba­go hav­ing its own car­ni­val, has ex­pressed some con­cerns about the or­gan­i­sa­tion of the event.

While he saw no­tice­able im­prove­ments from the in­au­gur­al fes­ti­val, Pe­ters says more needs to be done to de­vel­op it in­to a world-class event and is call­ing for more col­lab­o­ra­tion be­tween the THA and NCC. Mr Pe­ters' ideas should be tak­en on board as pre­lim­i­nary plan­ning be­gins for the 2024 fes­ti­val. With his con­sid­er­able ex­pe­ri­ence as a for­mer Cul­ture Min­is­ter, one of the Trin­ba­go Uni­fied Ca­lyp­so­ni­ans’ Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TU­CO) founders and a suc­cess­ful ca­lyp­son­ian and busi­ness­man, Pe­ters can add val­ue in the de­vel­op­men­tal stages of To­ba­go Car­ni­val.

In ad­di­tion, THA of­fi­cials should not ig­nore the fact that or­gan­is­ers of car­ni­vals in oth­er parts of the re­gion and the world reg­u­lar­ly seek the NCC's ex­per­tise to im­prove their events.

Greater co­or­di­na­tion and close co­op­er­a­tion be­tween the THA, NCC and the spe­cial-pur­pose com­pa­nies, To­ba­go Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion Ltd, To­ba­go Tourism Agency Ltd and the To­ba­go Per­form­ing Arts Com­pa­ny should be the next cru­cial step in im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty and struc­ture of the event.

To­ba­go Car­ni­val has al­ready claimed a sig­nif­i­cant space on this coun­try's cul­tur­al cal­en­dar. The next step should be to push for its re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al suc­cess.