Pe­ter Ray Blood

"You have no band with­out a beau­ti­ful flag woman." These lyrics opened the ca­lyp­so Flag Woman which earned the late Lord Kitch­en­er his tenth Road March ti­tle in 1976. The Grand­mas­ter was pay­ing trib­ute to the lithe, en­er­getic women who wave flag for steel­bands, and re­main an in­te­gral part of steel­band's colour­ful lore and the Panora­ma com­pe­ti­tion.Like the flag woman there are many oth­er in­di­vid­u­als who are in the back­ground of car­ni­val but whose in­put fu­els our na­tion­al fes­ti­val; peo­ple like the ca­lyp­so judge, sound en­gi­neer, and event plan­ner. T&T Guardian is bring­ing these all-im­por­tant folk out of the shad­ows and plac­ing the spot­light on them for Car­ni­val 2013.

We baulk at the in­creas­ing price of ad­mis­sion to Car­ni­val all-in­clu­sive par­ties, but rarely think about the in­tri­ca­cies of or­gan­is­ing these events. Char­lene Clarke is an events co-or­di­na­tor and has man­aged some of the biggest all-in­clu­sive fetes and pub­lic fetes in Car­ni­val.

Born in Port-of-Spain but grow­ing up in Ch­agua­nas, Clarke is the el­dest of five chil­dren, and has three sis­ters and one broth­er. She re­calls: "For me child­hood wasn't re­al­ly about dolls and oth­er girlie stuff. I am the el­dest so I was al­ways the one to take care of my young sib­lings while mom was at work. So, be­ing re­spon­si­ble has al­ways been part of me."

Clarke was the event plan­ner for Cus­toms Boys Car­ni­val fete a few years ago. She said: "That fete was held on a Car­ni­val Wednes­day at dual venues–the Sta­di­um and the train­ing grounds next door. With over 20,000 peo­ple in at­ten­dance, it was a re­al chal­lenge. What made that night tougher for me was that on leav­ing the venue at 1.30 am, I had to dri­ve to Saly­bia by my­self to pre­pare that venue for the Thurs­day Es­cape to Playa del Este all-in­clu­sive. On the road that morn­ing was a scary event, es­pe­cial­ly with all those heavy du­ty trucks com­ing at you."

An­oth­er ma­jor event Clarke planned was an agents con­ven­tion which re­quired co-or­di­nat­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 15 dif­fer­ent re­gion­al ter­ri­to­ries, and bring­ing them to­geth­er, four years ago. This re­quired al­so get­ting the agents to South Amer­i­ca for ten days af­ter they de­part­ed Trinidad.

Asked how she be­came so in­volved in Car­ni­val events, Clarke dis­closed: "My grand fa­ther (Un­cle Gilbert) used to make mas with Ken Mor­ris. He had a back­ground in the mil­i­tary. It was through Un­cle Gilbert I de­vel­oped a love and ap­pre­ci­a­tion for cul­ture, how to be re­spon­si­ble, and how to earn your own mon­ey. Grand­dad al­so did mas for my pri­ma­ry school for which I played for. I even played queen one year. He was al­so an avid sup­port­er of Phase II Pan Groove and Pan­de­mo­ni­um. Grow­ing up then close to Pan­de­mo­ni­um on Jern­ing­ham Av­enue in Bel­mont, pan, mas and Car­ni­val sim­ply be­came part of my life."

Much of the pro­fes­sion­al Clarke has be­come was nur­tured in her for­ma­tive years as a teenag­er. She ex­plained: "I at­tend­ed Cor­pus Christi Con­vent in Diego Mar­tin. While in school we'd get on the job train­ing in com­pa­nies, un­der the di­rec­tion of the prin­ci­pal Sis­ter Petronel­la, a strict dis­ci­pli­nar­i­an. So, train­ing for life be­gan from as ear­ly as school. From age 16, I be­gan ac­cu­mu­lat­ing job ex­pe­ri­ence and busi­ness acu­men in a va­ri­ety of fields, like ho­tel man­age­ment, broad­cast­ing, pub­lic re­la­tions, mar­ket­ing, busi­ness plan­ning, fi­nance and strate­gic plan­ning."

Hav­ing ac­quired a de­gree via long dis­tance study­ing Clarke ven­tured in­to teach­ing at Ser­vol. "Teach­ing for me was a way of giv­ing back af­ter I had sur­vived a near fa­tal ac­ci­dent," re­vealed Clarke. "My ad­ver­tis­ing job came next and here I was able to utilise all the skills I'd pre­vi­ous­ly learned. I felt re­strict­ed in ad­ver­tis­ing, as I felt that I wasn't util­is­ing all my abil­i­ties. So, with the en­cour­age­ment of an ap­pre­cia­tive trainee at the time, she con­vinced me to branch off on my own.

"I opened my own com­pa­ny –Un­lim­it­ed Re­sources–eight years ago. Dur­ing the tran­si­tionary pe­ri­od I was al­ways free­lanc­ing as an events plan­ner of all dif­fer­ent types of projects, from pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als to cor­po­rate events. Event plan­ning is a lot about strat­e­gy, in all as­pects. You have to man­age your time prop­er­ly. In my case, as a sin­gle moth­er of a 15-year-old daugh­ter, this is even more crit­i­cal. Ear­ly o'clock I re­alised that a pro­fes­sion­al sin­gle woman must spend qual­i­ty time with their chil­dren."

One of Clarke's pet projects is the an­nu­al Car­ni­val Thurs­day all-in­clu­sive par­ty, in Saly­bia, at the Playa del Este re­sort. She said: "This year the event is themed A Slice of Par­adise and it is go­ing to be some­thing very mem­o­rable for all who at­tend. Plan­ning a fete like this be­gins im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the cur­rent one has end­ed. We do the post mortem and as­sess­ment of the chal­lenges, mak­ing notes and cor­rec­tions for the fol­low­ing year's event. A part of plan­ning this event is vis­it­ing oth­er sim­i­lar events as you need to as­sess the per­for­mances of the artistes you've hired and the ser­vice providers, which in­cludes food and bar. Hav­ing made your notes, and with your bud­get in place, it's all sys­tems go.

"This event has a niche mar­ket which is tar­get­ed. It is not a mass me­dia event, but one in which every as­pect of it is unique. It ac­tu­al­ly be­gan as an at­trac­tion for the for­eign­ers, and the name 'Es­cape' was cho­sen to cater to the lo­cals who want­ed to 'es­cape' from their jobs on a work­ing day, the Thurs­day be­fore Car­ni­val day. It is a par­ty which al­lows its guests to re­lax in a ham­mock while look­ing at the ocean, or pool­side, en­joy­ing great cui­sine and, most im­por­tant­ly, be­ing with friends. An ex­pert in the all-in­clu­sive par­ty busi­ness, Clarke is con­cerned about the fu­ture of this Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ty. She said: "I feel that the all-in­clu­sive prod­uct needs to be re­born, with low­er priced ad­mis­sion. We now have events pric­ing them­selves out of the mar­ket. Pro­mot­ers have to be re­al­is­tic as to the cur­rent eco­nom­ics in the coun­try and the val­ue of the dol­lar. It will have to be­gin with the re­struc­tur­ing of the schools all-in­clu­sive events. Their event is based on spon­sor­ship, which ac­tu­al­ly pays for the event; the cost of their tick­et is what gen­er­ates prof­it. A pri­vate pro­mot­er how­ev­er doesn't have that lux­u­ry or ben­e­fit. The prof­it for the pri­vate pro­mot­er is much small­er as he has many more over­heads.

"To main­tain the qual­i­ty of the prod­uct, and the ex­pec­ta­tions of pa­trons, the prod­uct will have to be re-de­signed, go­ing back to ba­sics. "In par­ty plan­ning there are so many el­e­ments a pro­mot­er must look at, and they must think first of the pay­ing pa­tron. For in­stance, many pro­mot­ers do not take out pub­lic li­a­bil­i­ty in­sur­ance to pro­tect their pa­trons in case of some se­ri­ous in­ci­dent. Some don't even have an am­bu­lance on site. Pro­mot­ers re­al­ly need to study this kind of en­ter­prise se­ri­ous­ly be­fore ven­tur­ing in­to it. The gold­en rule is the pa­tron comes first."