From be­ing con­sid­ered too much for lo­cal stages, to mak­ing waves across the Caribbean through fa­cade de­signs.

Over the Car­ni­val sea­son, pic­tures of elab­o­rate stage de­signs fea­tur­ing a fa­cade iden­ti­fy­ing the event have brought a smile to the face of Shel­don Stephen.

Stephen, the own­er and founder of the Lol­labee Group, is pleased that this as­pect of the event pro­mo­tion has caught on in Trinidad and To­ba­go and now across the re­gion.

Stephen fa­mous­ly in­vest­ed over $1 mil­lion for the stage for his Xpe­ri­ence Fete which is con­sis­tent­ly the largest stage de­sign for the Car­ni­val, but he has been qui­et­ly im­prov­ing stage se­tups for many large events dur­ing the sea­son.

“I felt like it was miss­ing from Trinidad per se, be­cause I would al­ways go to some in­ter­na­tion­al fes­ti­vals, and you no­tice this is go­ing back to eight or 10 years ago. Back then, notic­ing their lev­el of pro­duc­tion and how they do things and how it looks and how every­body re­ceives it, in­clud­ing my­self, as a pa­tron go­ing to a fes­ti­val. It’s like, al­ways a wow fac­tor,” he said, adding that he was fas­ci­nat­ed by the in­vest­ment in decor and sig­nage at in­ter­na­tion­al fes­ti­vals com­pared to Car­ni­val pro­duc­tions.

“As time went by, I just start­ed to try to change what was nor­mal in Trinidad. I feel like five to six years ago, it was okay to just put up a stage and put some lights in, and peo­ple would come and have a good time. Now, af­ter many years, year on year, just knock­ing on pro­mot­ers and the cor­po­rate sec­tor to change how this out­look of our pre­sen­ta­tion is, we grad­u­al­ly sort of mould­ed this change,” said Stephen

He not­ed that there were some ear­ly adopters of his sug­ges­tion, but af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, more Car­ni­val events have fol­lowed suit.

“I got sup­port from the sort of pro­mot­ers that want­ed change like Adri­an Chan­dler, Adri­an Scoon, Pri­vate Ryan and Cae­sar’s Army, all these peo­ple em­braced and ac­cept­ed this change,’ said Stephen, who ad­mit­ted that some of the push back was due to the ad­di­tion­al cost of these ad­di­tions to the event’s ex­pens­es.

“I mean, if you are a pro­mot­er, and you are ac­cus­tomed spend­ing $10 to do a par­ty. You don’t want to spend $20 be­cause then that’s $10 that you’re go­ing to lose from your prof­it. So it wasn’t an easy thing to just get pro­mot­ers or the cor­po­rate sec­tor to em­brace this change, be­cause this change is a change that comes with a dol­lar val­ue,” Stephen said.

The Lol­labee founder, how­ev­er, was able to con­vince more pro­mot­ers af­ter the brand­ing as­pect of these stages be­came ap­par­ent, as so­cial me­dia posts ex­tend­ed brand­ing every time pic­tures of the stages were post­ed.

“We start­ed to grad­u­al­ly change what stages look like in Trinidad. And year on year, I got more op­por­tu­ni­ty and I de­liv­ered. And then peo­ple start­ed to re­alise, this is be­com­ing a nor­mal thing. Now I can’t do a par­ty and not put up a sign, even if it’s just a ba­sic sign on top of my stage, I have to do that now. Eight years ago, you didn’t, and it was fine. Now, if you look at Car­ni­val, this en­tire Car­ni­val, every sin­gle stage, some­thing. If you do not brand it, you will just not be a pro­mot­er any­more. And that’s the facts,” said Stephen,.

“I re­al­ly gen­uine­ly feel that I made that hap­pen be­cause apart from do­ing it and set­ting the trend, now, I feel like every­body is fol­low­ing it.”

Apart from Xpe­ri­ence, Stephen has been re­spon­si­ble for stages at Soa­ka, Stink and Dut­ty and Pres­tige. And he was al­so be­hind the de­signs at So­ca Brain­wash on Sat­ur­day.

But he is pleased that oth­er events have al­so start­ed adopt­ed the trend and, in his view, up­lift­ed the op­tics of T&T Car­ni­val.

“Now we are at the point where every sin­gle par­ty has to put a sign on this stage. If they don’t, they ba­si­cal­ly wouldn’t be a par­ty any­more. And that, for me, is a com­plete win, not just for me, but for pro­duc­tion in gen­er­al. Be­cause if you’re talk­ing about high­er qual­i­ty, you’re talk­ing about get­ting pro­mot­ers to ac­cept that high­er qual­i­ty. And now I feel like they have no choice, some of them, they have to, be­cause every­body start­ed to talk about fa­cade, fa­cade, fa­cade, and five years ago, when I men­tioned the word fa­cade, no­body didn’t even know what it meant. So now it’s like a com­mon term in par­ties and pro­duc­tion,” Stephen said.

It’s not just T&T pro­mot­ers who have sought out Stephen and his team for fa­cade and stage de­signs. The re­gion has sat up and tak­en no­tice.

“In 2023, I nev­er did any work in the Caribbean. And from 2024 to now, I pret­ty much did work in about 17 is­lands, so that as well, has been a nice win for us. It’s a sim­i­lar theme that you’re see­ing, this de­mand for greater pre­sen­ta­tions from these stages. When you speak to the pro­mot­ers of the is­lands as well in the Caribbean. The Caribbean was watch­ing us as we start­ed to in­no­vate what we know pro­duc­tions as,” said Stephen.

He stressed that this as­pect has fur­ther un­der­lined how the cre­ative sec­tor with­in Car­ni­val is not just a hotbed for em­ploy­ment but al­so a po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ty for the earn­ing of for­eign ex­change.

Stephen said, “It opens up em­ploy­ment for the cre­ative sec­tor. Be­cause, back in the day, when you had peo­ple that were just cre­ative, just de­sign, just colours, just in­no­va­tion, they re­al­ly didn’t have any­where to go. But now more and more com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing my­self, are look­ing for cre­atives, peo­ple who can en­vi­sion and see things be­fore and put it down on pa­per and ba­si­cal­ly de­sign and cre­ate. So it’s al­so a new sec­tor for em­ploy­ment. Be­cause, I mean, eight years ago, you’re not go­ing to look to hire some­body to draw for you, es­pe­cial­ly in a pro­duc­tion. But now, in terms of who’s try­ing to ad­vance this, these are the things that we need to find.”

He felt, in gen­er­al the pub­lic still did not have a wide ap­pre­ci­a­tion of how much em­ploy­ment or in­come gen­er­a­tion is spread through Car­ni­val and event pro­mo­tions.

“In terms of Car­ni­val em­ploy­ment, it is phe­nom­e­nal. I mean, I don’t think peo­ple no­tice or un­der­stand the amount of em­ploy­ment that is cre­at­ed from the Car­ni­val. We’re talk­ing about from clean­ers go straight up to stage pro­duc­tion to event co­or­di­na­tion, to food, all these all-in­clu­sive providers,” he said, “I mean, it is a very big net­work of providers that it takes to make our events hap­pen, and a lot of em­ploy­ment is cre­at­ed.”