As the prepa­ra­tions for Car­ni­val 2025 be­gin to ramp up, a call has come for a more stan­dard­ised ap­proach for com­pen­sa­tion for mas de­sign­ers.

En­tre­pre­neur and founder of the Make it Hap­pen Net­work, An­dre Sealey, has de­vel­oped a draft frame­work en­ti­tled “Com­pen­sa­tion and In­tel­lec­tu­al Rights for Car­ni­val Cos­tume De­sign­ers in Trinidad & To­ba­go: A Call for Re­form.”

Sealey is hop­ing the doc­u­ment, can prompt a pub­lic con­sul­ta­tion on the top­ic.

In a sum­ma­ry of the pro­pos­al, Sealey said, “The cre­ative sec­tor in Trinidad and To­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly Car­ni­val cos­tume de­sign­ers, has faced sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges due to some out­dat­ed and non-ex­is­tent busi­ness mod­els for the right­ful com­pen­sa­tion of Car­ni­val cos­tume de­sign­ers. The ex­ist­ing mod­els fail to ac­knowl­edge de­sign­ing as a le­git­i­mate ca­reer and do not en­sure right­ful com­pen­sa­tion.”

He added, “This is­sue is not on­ly detri­men­tal to the de­sign­ers but al­so ham­pers the progress of the Or­ange Econ­o­my—a sec­tor where cre­ativ­i­ty and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty are key dri­vers of val­ue.”

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian, he ex­plained that his de­ci­sion to de­vel­op the draft pol­i­cy was in­spired by and in­ter­ac­tion with de­sign­er Nikitha Corn­wall, who in­formed him of var­i­ous chal­lenges de­sign­ers faced.

This was fol­lowed with con­ver­sa­tions he had with var­i­ous de­sign­ers in the in­dus­try who ex­pressed sev­er­al con­cerns par­tic­u­lar­ly for less­er es­tab­lished names in the in­dus­try.

“They said that’s a big is­sue. One de­sign­er get­ting paid this amount, while they feel some of them un­der­val­ued, some of them feel like they charge too much. It’s one price in Trinidad, an­oth­er price some­where else, and there was no equi­lib­ri­um. And there was no frame­work to stan­dard­ise the process in any shape or form,” said Sealey, who said his work with peers in the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty fur­ther prompt­ed his de­ci­sion to de­vel­op the frame­work.

“I worked with a lot of at­tor­neys in my pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tion. And I said, Well, that’s an easy fix, you know, and I went home and I said, Okay, I drew from the fact that in the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty, they have a frame­work. If they have worked X num­ber of years that they are rec­om­mend­ed to charge this amount. And as the years go by, the fee goes up as well. So I kind of used that as the back­bone,” said Sealey.

He said he then took in­to con­sid­er­a­tion oth­er fac­tors, which would in­flu­ence com­pen­sa­tion for de­sign­ers.

“Be­cause that would on­ly con­sid­er one vari­able be­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence, but as a de­sign­er, there are a lot more vari­ables to con­sid­er. So I thought about what made sense and said okay, the band size, the cost of the cos­tume, the pro­duc­tion costs, and I put all those things to­geth­er. And that’s kind of where it stemmed from. It’s prob­lem solv­ing and just ad­dress­ing so many is­sues of my clos­est friends at the time,” said Sealey.

He said the pro­posed frame­work and guid­ance note would call for band lead­ers to adopt a trans­par­ent, case-by-case ap­proach when de­ter­min­ing com­pen­sa­tion, con­sid­er­ing sev­en key fac­tors such as the de­sign­er’s ex­pe­ri­ence, their so­cial me­dia in­flu­ence and im­pact, the sell­ing price of the cos­tume, pro­duc­tion costs, the size and length of time in ex­is­tence of the band and ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion.

Sealey rec­om­mend­ed that a pri­or­i­ty should be placed on the num­ber of years ex­pe­ri­ence that each de­sign­er has at­tained in the in­dus­try, while tak­ing in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the re­main­ing six vari­ables, hence a weight­ing sys­tem should be ap­plied across all vari­ables.

He said the ini­tia­tive aims to re­in­force cos­tume de­sign­ing as a le­git­i­mate ca­reer and to in­tro­duce mon­eti­sa­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties based on de­sign­ers’ in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. The frame­work, he said, would pro­vide band lead­ers with tools and method­olo­gies to es­tab­lish a com­pre­hen­sive com­pen­sa­tion sys­tem for cos­tume pro­to­types.

He said, “It em­pha­sis­es the need for a fair and trans­par­ent ap­proach, con­sid­er­ing var­i­ous fac­tors to de­ter­mine ap­pro­pri­ate com­pen­sa­tion.”

Sealey said he hoped to make the frame­work pub­lic at the end of the band launch sea­son so that it could be prop­er­ly im­ple­ment­ed ahead of the up­com­ing Car­ni­val sea­son.

The key com­po­nents of the pro­pos­al are:

• Mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion: De­ter­mined by fac­tors such as de­sign com­plex­i­ty, ma­te­r­i­al costs, crafts­man­ship, and the de­sign­er’s ex­pe­ri­ence;

• In­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty roy­al­ty pro­gramme: De­sign­ers re­ceive a per­cent­age of cos­tume sales, fos­ter­ing recog­ni­tion of their in­tel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions.

He said this would en­cour­age a col­lab­o­ra­tive and in­clu­sive en­vi­ron­ment, en­sur­ing that both de­sign­ers and band lead­ers ben­e­fit from a stan­dard­ised com­pen­sa­tion regime. Sealey agreed that as it stands, the lack of a stan­dard­ised frame­work has led to sig­nif­i­cant vari­abil­i­ty and sub­jec­tiv­i­ty in de­sign­er fees. He said that with stan­dard­ised re­mu­ner­a­tion, there would be the fos­ter­ing of healthy com­pe­ti­tion while al­so en­cour­ag­ing strict cri­te­ria for fee de­ter­mi­na­tion.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, he felt it would re­duce sub­jec­tiv­i­ty in pric­ing while pro­mot­ing greater in­clu­sion in the com­pen­sa­tion de­ci­sion-mak­ing process.

“The ul­ti­mate goal is to en­sure de­sign­ers are ad­e­quate­ly com­pen­sat­ed not on­ly for their de­signs but al­so for their in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty. This in­cludes im­ple­ment­ing a roy­al­ty pro­gramme, al­low­ing de­sign­ers to earn a per­cent­age of sales from their cos­tumes. The pro­posed fee sched­ule and roy­al­ty pro­gramme aim to be con­sis­tent with in­dus­try bench­marks and glob­al stan­dards.”

Rec­om­men­da­tions for the re­mu­ner­a­tion frame­work in­clude:

• Fixed fee: A set roy­al­ty fee of 1-5 per cent from cos­tume sales, based on in­dus­try stan­dards;

• Vari­able fee: A scal­able fee based on ex­pect­ed cos­tume sales, pri­ori­tis­ing the de­sign­er’s ex­pe­ri­ence.

He said the frame­work would al­so ad­dress some con­tro­ver­sies that had been seen in pre­vi­ous sea­sons where de­sign­ers were dis­missed or over­looked for do­ing work for mul­ti­ple bands.

He said the pro­pos­al would pro­vide for de­sign­ers to have the flex­i­bil­i­ty to work with mul­ti­ple bands via non-ex­clu­sive con­tracts un­less en­gaged in an ex­clu­sive con­tract, which he said, should come with ad­di­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion.

“All agree­ments should clear­ly out­line terms, in­clud­ing com­pen­sa­tion, in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights and con­fi­den­tial­i­ty claus­es,” said Sealey, who be­lieves that band lead­ers and even the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion should adopt some, if not all of the pro­posed method­olo­gies cit­ed in his frame­work.

He said, “The guid­ance note can set a new stan­dard in the Car­ni­val in­dus­try, em­pha­sis­ing the val­ue of in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty and en­sur­ing fair ex­change of val­ue be­tween de­sign­ers and band lead­ers. By adopt­ing these rec­om­men­da­tions, the Car­ni­val in­dus­try in Trinidad & To­ba­go can cre­ate a more eq­ui­table and sus­tain­able en­vi­ron­ment for its cre­ative tal­ents.”

When con­tact­ed, most band lead­ers told the Busi­ness Guardian that they would pre­fer to see the pro­pos­al doc­u­ment be­fore com­ment­ing on it.

How­ev­er, Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val Bands As­so­ci­a­tion (TTC­BA) Pres­i­dent Mark Ayen said the as­so­ci­a­tion would be open to any such dis­cus­sion once it was in ben­e­fi­cial to stake­hold­ers and would push the in­dus­try in a pos­i­tive di­rec­tion.