Last year, the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) was com­plete­ly hands-off when some artistes and or­ga­ni­za­tions ven­tured to host vir­tu­al events to fill the void cre­at­ed by the can­cel­la­tion of the fes­ti­val.

For 2022, how­ev­er, there has been a com­plete change of po­si­tion and the agency tasked with the sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment of T&T’s Car­ni­val is ful­ly on board for the safe zones edi­tion of the fes­ti­val which is set to start at the end of this week.

The first ‘Taste of Car­ni­val,’ a ca­lyp­so con­cert, will be staged vir­tu­al­ly on Fri­day. In­ter­est­ing­ly that was the very type of event that the NCC sat out last year when some in the in­dus­try at­tempt­ed to sal­vage some sem­blance of the fes­ti­val.

With bare­ly four weeks left in the 2022 sea­son, NCC chair Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters re­vealed that the first in-per­son event will be staged on Feb­ru­ary 11 with pa­trons be­ing ac­com­mo­dat­ed in pods de­signed with COVID pro­to­cols in mind.

The pods are cur­rent­ly be­ing in­stalled at the main venue at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, one of the des­ig­nat­ed lo­ca­tions for ‘Taste of Car­ni­val’ shows. The oth­ers are Queen’s Hall, Na­pari­ma Bowl, and the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (Nalis) Am­phithe­atre.

How­ev­er, de­tails are still to be giv­en about the se­ries of events planned to take place up to March 1, Car­ni­val Tues­day, at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of be­tween $25 mil­lion to $30 mil­lion.

The cal­en­dar of events has not yet been re­leased by the NCC, al­though there was a tour of the so­cial­ly dis­tanced out­door au­di­ence area be­ing erect­ed at the Sa­van­nah, com­pris­ing event pods that will ac­com­mo­date seat­ing groups of six and nine.

Seat­ing, of course, is the op­er­a­tional word here since the planned events will be “fete-less,” com­plete­ly de­void of any rev­el­ry in con­for­mi­ty with the strictest of pub­lic health pro­to­cols for the pan­dem­ic.

On­ly time will tell whether the NCC’s first for­ay in­to stag­ing Car­ni­val since the on­set of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic in 2020 will at­tract enough pub­lic sup­port to make the ef­fort worth­while.

Last year when some in­dus­try play­ers be­gan ex­plor­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of vir­tu­al Car­ni­val ac­tiv­i­ties, the NCC did not get on board. There was no fund­ing or fa­cil­i­ta­tion of any kind for the fetes, con­certs, and oth­er pri­vate events held across var­i­ous vir­tu­al plat­forms, in­clud­ing a hero­ic ef­fort by the Fa­ti­ma Old Boys As­so­ci­a­tion (FO­BA) to stage a so­cial me­dia ver­sion of their pop­u­lar an­nu­al fundrais­er, So­ka in Mo­ka

Iw­er George got the ball rolling with a vir­tu­al Car­ni­val on Box­ing Night launch and Sekon Sta at­tempt­ed a so­cial­ly dis­tanced Sekon Sun­day at Queen’s Hall.

These events yield­ed mixed re­sults but served as use­ful tem­plates for what is pos­si­ble if pan­dem­ic con­di­tions drag out for much longer. It would be in­ter­est­ing to find out whether NCC of­fi­cials, who are sup­posed to be ful­ly ac­tive year-round plan­ning and de­vel­op­ing the coun­try’s biggest cul­tur­al event, were pay­ing at­ten­tion, and tak­ing notes.

COVID-19, with all its un­cer­tain­ties, ne­ces­si­tat­ed a high de­gree of ad­vance plan­ning and even ex­per­i­men­ta­tion on the part of the NCC in an­tic­i­pa­tion of stag­ing the so­cial­ly dis­tanced fes­ti­val that is now be­ing at­tempt­ed.

Hope­ful­ly, that was done so that pa­trons will have plen­ty to savour in this ‘Taste of Car­ni­val.’