Mark Lyn­der­say

?It's rare for a po­lit­i­cal ap­pa­ratchik to sur­prise me, but I ac­tu­al­ly blinked while I watched Howard Chin Lee on a news clip say­ing, and I am not mak­ing this up, "We can­not stop the me­dia from cov­er­ing Car­ni­val on the streets."

I had to won­der...if the na­tion's po­lit­i­cal lead­er­ship want­ed to slow­ly crush the life out of the great­est show on earth, what could they pos­si­bly do dif­fer­ent­ly? Let's run down the check­list of re­cent Car­ni­val works by the Min­istry of Cul­ture and the NCC. De­stroy the decades-old nexus of Car­ni­val, the Grand­stand in the Sa­van­nah. Check. Re­place it with noth­ing, shov­ing mas­quer­aders in­to the street, cel­e­brat­ing that as a ma­jor ad­vance in the fes­ti­val's de­vel­op­ment. Check. Build a mas­sive, un­der­utilised con­cert hall while rub­bing the noses of mas­quer­aders in lead­er­ship by host­ing the big show in the street right out­side of that fa­cil­i­ty. Check. One has to imag­ine that there must have been heat­ed dis­cus­sions at the top lev­els of Car­ni­val's man­age­ment to find out what might have been missed in this steady raz­ing of tra­di­tion and val­ue in the fes­ti­val.

What pri­or ab­solute fail­ure might have been for­got­ten that might be res­ur­rect­ed to de­stroy the re­main­ing en­thu­si­asm that the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go might hold for Car­ni­val? Some­one must have re­mem­bered the de­ba­cle when the gov­ern­ment-owned tele­vi­sion sta­tion was pre­vi­ous­ly put in charge of han­dling Car­ni­val ac­cred­i­ta­tion and de­cid­ed that ter­ri­ble mis­take was worth re­peat­ing. Gild­ing this odi­ous lily was the de­ci­sion to re­spect Car­ni­val's stake­hold­ers by bur­den­ing their over­worked ex­ec­u­tives with the ad­di­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of re­view­ing every ap­pli­ca­tion for gen­er­al Car­ni­val cov­er­age.

The rea­son for this bril­liant move? The per­ceived need to cut down on the num­bers of du­ly ac­cred­it­ed me­dia prac­ti­tion­ers cov­er­ing Car­ni­val. Um...what? You want less pub­lic­i­ty and cir­cu­la­tion of in­for­ma­tion about the na­tion­al fes­ti­val? Ei­ther Car­ni­val is be­ing run by hope­less in­com­pe­tents who have no idea what makes the fes­ti­val en­gag­ing and fun or there is a con­spir­a­cy to kill it off slow­ly and de­ci­sive­ly.

Let's put this blunt­ly for the slow of wit. There is no such thing as too much pho­tog­ra­phy or video of this fes­ti­val. De­spite the ex­plo­sion in mass me­dia over the last 15 years, large Car­ni­val bands now em­ploy their own pho­tog­ra­phers and video crews and pro­duce their own mag­a­zines for their fans. While all this lead­er­ship hits the fan, I see an op­por­tu­ni­ty for brinks­man­ship. Let's throw some­thing new in­to the mix and cre­ate a new stage venue along the Car­ni­val route that's op­ti­mised for the needs of vi­su­al re­port­ing. A space where all the video crews, pho­tog­ra­phers and on­line pub­li­ca­tions will have ac­cess to high speed broad­band, space for live video trans­mis­sion, well-de­signed lines of sight for cap­tur­ing mas­quer­aders and the biggest sur­prise of all for work­ing jour­nal­ists at Car­ni­val, com­fort­able chairs, ta­bles, de­cent food and bath­room fa­cil­i­ties that are reg­u­lar­ly cleaned. No judges, no spec­ta­tors, and se­cu­ri­ty charged with on­ly one man­date. Keep the mas mov­ing from en­try to ex­it. Then no­ti­fy every band­leader about the new venue and see where they go on Car­ni­val Tues­day.

More at:

http://lyn­der­say­dig­i­tal.com/bd/files/

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