Take a bow, NCC, for the “hap­py Car­ni­val vil­lages”. What an ex­cep­tion­al spread of car­ni­val joy was cre­at­ed by the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) team led by Chair­man Pe­ter Kan­hai and CEO Kei­ba Ja­cob Mot­t­ley! In the past, this col­umn has crit­i­cised the NCC for its over­ly long Di­manche Gras shows and oth­er short­com­ings, but this year, the Fla­va and John Cu­pid Car­ni­val Vil­lages project has re­deemed it from any past de­fi­cien­cies.

The or­gan­is­ers blend­ed the di­verse cul­tur­al art forms - au­then­tic Mas and crafts that al­ways cap­ti­vate - and en­ter­tain­ing live per­for­mances with an ar­ray of lo­cal cui­sine, all in a re­laxed fam­i­ly at­mos­phere. There were sim­ple things that made the events spe­cial. Sim­ple, but im­por­tant things that are of­ten over­looked. The at­ten­dants at the gate warm­ly wel­comed peo­ple, mak­ing all feel this is es­pe­cial­ly for you … it’s yours … come in! As you en­tered, you felt cheer­ful vibes. The guards and tra­di­tion­al char­ac­ters at the gate said, “Good evening.” When you were leav­ing, they said, “Good night.” A Pier­rot Grenade stopped and asked, “Are you hav­ing a good time?” If you had a ques­tion, such as “Where is the John Cu­pid show?” the an­swer was not “over dey on de oth­er side,” but rather “come, let me show you.”

Cou­ples with ba­bies strolled around. Tod­dlers, peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties, tourists, teenagers, and el­ders … peo­ple from all walks of life milled around, chat­ting and en­joy­ing the cui­sine and great am­bi­ence. Two lit­tle girls, per­haps about 5 years old, put up their hands, shak­ing their waists, while Voice worked up the au­di­ence at the John Cu­pid Vil­lage.

The high-qual­i­ty, dy­nam­ic events cap­tured the car­ni­val spir­it in a well-or­gan­ised, clean, se­cure space, pro­vid­ing much en­joy­ment. The vil­lages have re­de­fined the car­ni­val prod­uct with a peo­ple-cen­tred pro­duc­tion. I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly be­lieve in free­ness, but what NCC did was to give the av­er­age per­son an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­pe­ri­ence the en­er­getic per­for­mances of their favourite artistes, while giv­ing less­er-known artistes a chance to show­case their tal­ents to a wide com­mu­ni­ty.

Those wel­com­ing vil­lages added sig­nif­i­cant val­ue to the car­ni­val brand. A test of ef­fi­cient and car­ing project man­agers is al­ways the ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and clean­li­ness of pub­lic util­i­ties. These fa­cil­i­ties were clean, staffed, and well-stocked at the time of my vis­it.

The NCC team has cre­at­ed a blue­print for com­mu­nal en­ter­tain­ment spaces. The floor­ing pro­tect­ed you from mud­dy grass and the un­even­ness of the sa­van­nah ground. Though there was some shel­ter in the event of rain, it should per­haps be more ex­ten­sive; with heavy pa­tron­age, there would be dis­com­fort for chil­dren, el­der­ly peo­ple and those with dis­abil­i­ties if there weren’t suf­fi­cient shel­tered ar­eas. Fla­va had a large, cov­ered area with ad­e­quate seat­ing and eat­ing ar­eas.

It was men­tioned that the vil­lages should be­come year-round events. I would cau­tion against do­ing that. Over­head costs would in­crease sub­stan­tial­ly, and it would be un­sus­tain­able with­out en­try fees. The NCC would risk the project los­ing its fresh in­no­v­a­tive­ness. They should re­main nov­el­ty Car­ni­val brands. How­ev­er, there’s mer­it in adapt­ing the Fla­va Vil­lage for spe­cial oc­ca­sions with na­tion­al and cul­tur­al themes, such as for In­de­pen­dence Day and Re­pub­lic Day. The vil­lages point the way, show­ing how ge­o­graph­ic re­gions can cre­ate vi­brant com­mu­nal events that gen­er­ate lo­cal and for­eign tourism rev­enues.

The ex­pec­ta­tion now is that the Di­manche Gras will rise to the stan­dards of ef­fi­cien­cy, pa­tron-cen­tred­ness and en­joy­ment of the Fla­va and John Cu­pid events. Di­manche Gras is the piv­otal event lead­ing in­to J’Ou­vert and the street pa­rade, and should be a spec­tac­u­lar cel­e­bra­tion of the crème de la crème of de Mas. In re­cent years, ex­cel­lent ideas have been marred by poor light­ing, muf­fled au­dio, and long-drawn-out, un­even pro­duc­tions, with the MCs time-fill­ing.

Over the past 70 years, NCC lead­er­ship and teams have brought us some spec­tac­u­lar and en­joy­able events, with pa­trons pack­ing both the North and Grand Stands for car­ni­val shows. What this NCC team has done is in­ject nov­el fam­i­ly and gen­er­al events, build­ing up­on the foun­da­tion laid by for­mer teams.

Di­manche Gras is in­tend­ed to show­case the best of ca­lyp­so, car­ni­val kings and queens, panora­ma, and oth­er com­pe­ti­tion win­ners. Peo­ple love their so­ca, ca­lyp­so, and chut­ney so­ca and would stay to hear them af­ter the main com­pe­ti­tions have end­ed. The chal­lenge is to en­sure a smooth-flow­ing, con­cise, im­pact­ful and mem­o­rable Di­manche Gras.

Pro­duc­ing the ex­cep­tion­al vil­lages would have re­quired sig­nif­i­cant plan­ning and com­mit­ment. What­ev­er is­sues there were didn’t de­tract from an en­joy­able ex­pe­ri­ence.

The NCC team de­serves every com­men­da­tion.

Take a bow.