“To­ba­go is ready to stand on its own and will prove it when it hosts its own Car­ni­val in Oc­to­ber this year.”

These were the words of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Sec­re­tary for Tourism and Cul­ture Tashia Bur­ris yes­ter­day, af­ter the of­fi­cial me­dia launch of the event at Shaw Park, To­ba­go.

“To­ba­go is ready to stand on its own in terms of our cre­ative abil­i­ty and our cre­ative ex­pres­sion,” Bur­ris said.

“What we didn’t want was a sit­u­a­tion where per­sons were try­ing to dic­tate how the Car­ni­val should look be­fore we had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to have the con­ver­sa­tions with the per­sons in the space, to have the con­ver­sa­tions among our­selves, ask our­selves some ques­tions, what does a Car­ni­val look like? What should a Car­ni­val look like? Should we copy a busi­ness mod­el that seems to be work­ing for a place that has larg­er economies of scale than we do, or should we look at what we have, what makes us unique­ly To­ba­go.”

Bur­ris added that To­ba­go’s en­vi­ron­ment, his­to­ry and cul­ture are what’s be­ing used in show­cas­ing the in­au­gur­al Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions.

“All those el­e­ments to cre­ate some­thing that we could now put our name on and say this is To­ba­go and say it to the rest of the world. So yes, we are hap­py for per­sons want­i­ng to come in the space and as­sist, we are hap­py for peo­ple who want to come and par­tic­i­pate, but we want peo­ple to give To­ba­go the op­por­tu­ni­ty to sim­ply do what is best for To­ba­go and put out their form of ex­pres­sion that tru­ly rep­re­sents who we tru­ly are as a peo­ple.”

Bur­ris ad­mit­ted that To­ba­go is now be­com­ing pro­tec­tive of its space.

She said while there will be the “biki­ni” cos­tumes, spec­ta­tors will be treat­ed to see­ing oth­er el­e­ments in the pa­rade, in­clud­ing the To­ba­go Her­itage Fes­ti­val, com­ing alive again.

“So, you’re go­ing to see our ole time wed­ding, our tra­di­tion­al char­ac­ters, you go­ing to see our moko jumbies, you go­ing to see all of these things on the road as well, so it re­al­ly gives a 360 de­gree im­merse of ex­pe­ri­ence in To­ba­go’s his­to­ry and cul­ture on the road.”

Bur­ris al­so re­vealed there will be a grand launch of To­ba­go Car­ni­val on Sep­tem­ber 10. She said dis­cus­sions were al­so on­go­ing with Caribbean Air­lines and the Port Au­thor­i­ty in terms of mak­ing Oc­to­ber’s air­line and fer­ry sched­ule pub­lic.