It’s the mid­dle of Jan­u­ary, and there are of­fi­cial­ly six weeks un­til Car­ni­val.

In a typ­i­cal Car­ni­val sea­son, many peo­ple would have al­ready at­tend­ed their first fete or pos­si­bly two or three.

This year how­ev­er, the var­i­ous pro­mot­ers and Car­ni­val bands have been us­ing their so­cial me­dia pages to rem­i­nisce on years past as the fu­ture con­tin­ues to be un­cer­tain for such events.

De­spite reaf­fir­ma­tion by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sat­ur­day that there would be a scaled down ver­sion of our Car­ni­val with safe zone events, many event pro­mot­ers are look­ing at the shrink­ing win­dow with dwin­dling hope and even less ex­pec­ta­tion that any­thing can hap­pen. For as time goes on, they are faced with in­creas­ing chal­lenges of the po­ten­tial costs of host­ing events with a high pos­si­bil­i­ty of loos­ing mon­ey.

An­dros Bel­fonte of Tick­et Fed­er­a­tion, a web­site which has be­come fa­mous for its Fete Cal­en­dar, con­firmed that they have been on stand­by for event an­nounce­ments. He ex­plained that pro­mot­ers are aware they may not have huge or even suc­cess­ful events, but in some cas­es are sim­ply push­ing for some­thing to hap­pen, sim­ply to keep the brand of Trinidad and To­ba­go Car­ni­val afloat in some way.

“They are re­al­ly try­ing to get some­thing hap­pen­ing, just to main­tain a pres­ence,” said Bel­fonte, who al­so ex­plained that cur­rent­ly the odds were stacked against them, in par­tic­u­lar the small event pro­mot­ers who did not have the fi­nan­cial re­sources to at­tempt to put to­geth­er events in such a short pe­ri­od. Es­pe­cial­ly one with ad­di­tion­al costs re­quired for safe zone pro­to­cols and re­duced pa­tron­age due to re­stric­tions.

Paige De Leon of the T&T Pro­mot­ers As­so­ci­a­tion con­firmed the long wait has cre­at­ed great un­cer­tain­ty as to what can hap­pen, de­spite the as­so­ci­a­tion push­ing dis­cus­sions for sev­er­al months with the gov­ern­ment about po­ten­tial events .

“The 50% ca­pac­i­ty sug­ges­tion that cur­rent­ly ex­ists “for safe zones” that chal­lenges the eco­nom­ic im­per­a­tive for any pro­mot­er and most like­ly would not be some­thing that would work well for us at this time. So that’s again some­thing that we will have to look at. And these are the rea­sons why no de­ci­sions can be tak­en. Be­cause we don’t have any pa­ra­me­ters. We don’t have any guide­lines as to how this could pos­si­bly take place. And the time is very, very short in the con­text of our tra­di­tion­al car­ni­val pe­ri­od,”she said, adding that dif­fi­cul­ties along the sup­ply chain could al­so fur­ther in­crease the price of host­ing events dur­ing this time.

“Un­til we have some word about what those guide­lines and what those pa­ra­me­ters look like, we’re not in a po­si­tion to make any plans. We have sim­ply been wait­ing for many, many months, hav­ing sub­mit­ted sig­nif­i­cant and ro­bust pro­pos­als, well thought out ones. We ne­go­ti­at­ed var­i­ous things and we sub­mit­ted those pro­pos­als and we’re wait­ing to find out what if any­thing, the guide­lines will be and un­til we know that, you know, we’re not in the game,” she said.

But even if word comes this week­end, De Leon ad­mit­ted that the pro­mot­ers faced an up­hill task giv­en the mul­ti­ple lo­gis­tics they would have to nav­i­gate to have events dur­ing a pan­dem­ic. The safe zone event, she ac­knowl­edged dif­fers great­ly in lo­gis­tics, and  ex­pens­es, com­pared to the typ­i­cal fete or Car­ni­val event.

“Peo­ple who have to sup­ply us with the raw ma­te­ri­als and the ser­vices that are need­ed to have an event. Peo­ple have to build stages. Peo­ple have to cre­ate cos­tumes peo­ple have to, you know, pre­pare their per­for­mances and all sorts of dif­fer­ent things have to hap­pen in or­der for an event to take place and events. An event cer­tain­ly that is of any qual­i­ty,”

There is al­so un­cer­tain­ty as to what au­di­ence would come out, if they come out at all giv­en the pan­dem­ic.

This meant that pro­mot­ers could put out all of these ex­pens­es and still stand to lose due to poor at­ten­dance.

This an grow­ing risk giv­en that, al­ready with safe zone ex­clud­ing ba­si­cal­ly 50 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion due the coun­try’s vac­ci­na­tion num­ber and the po­ten­tial ex­clu­sion of  tourist and for­eign based na­tion­als from Car­ni­val events.

De Leon ex­plained the de­layed an­nounce­ment  great­ly re­strict­ed their po­ten­tial in­volve­ment as they too would have to plan to get to Trinidad and To­ba­go for these events, which with every pass­ing day be­comes more dif­fi­cult.

“Peo­ple who do not re­side in Trinidad and To­ba­go have tra­di­tion­al­ly been  one of the main sup­port­ers of Car­ni­val. In oth­er words, peo­ple com­ing in­to the coun­try would need to know in ad­vance if there’s go­ing to be some­thing and if they want to jump on a plane and come where would they stay?” she said.

“If there aren’t pa­trons, then the event is not go­ing to hap­pen. So the ques­tion is, do we have time? Are peo­ple still hope­ful that some­thing will hap­pen? So many peo­ple are kind of wait­ing, but not every­one is able to press that but­ton at a mo­ment’s no­tice, both in terms of pro­mot­ers and in terms of the clients,” she said.

The ab­sence, up to now, of vir­tu­al events and scaled down, seat­ing on­ly con­certs which were held to fill the void last year was al­so par­tial­ly at­trib­uted to the lack of con­fir­ma­tion but al­so due to sim­i­lar con­cerns about re­turn on in­vest­ment.
Both Bel­fonte and De Leon told the Busi­ness Guardian that those events of­ten fell short in achiev­ing the re­turns ex­pect­ed for both pro­mot­er and pa­tron.

“Per­haps it is be­cause eco­nom­i­cal­ly it does not nec­es­sar­i­ly make a lot of sense. It doesn’t make a lot of sense and Car­ni­val is what Car­ni­val is, if we are re­al­ly talk­ing about Car­ni­val. You know, if we’re on­ly talk­ing about car­ni­val, on­ly talk­ing about So­ca events, then that, you know, presents ob­vi­ous chal­lenges in terms of hav­ing peo­ple sit on a chair and look at a per­for­mance that is not tra­di­tion­al­ly how we con­sume our cul­ture,” said De Leon.

But there is al­so the health con­cern that looms large, so much so that some pro­mot­ers are in favour of push­ing back events to lat­er in the year.

Randy Glas­gow is one of the pro­mot­ers in favour of such a de­ci­sion, as he ar­gued that at­tempt­ing to put to­geth­er any­thing at this time was too risky both in terms of safe­ty and al­so in terms of brand­ing.

“ A lot of time has elapsed so we are of the firm view that if we are hav­ing some events to repli­cate Car­ni­val it should move from Feb­ru­ary and put to Au­gust where our coun­try could bet­ter pre­pare in a pan­dem­ic for such events. Present­ly, we feel our coun­try  don’t have the nec­es­sary health in­fra­struc­ture and ca­pac­i­ty to deal with you know up­surge as a con­se­quence of events that may hap­pen in Feb­ru­ary, “ he said, adding that pro­mot­ers al­so ran the risk of be­ing la­belled as self­ish for push­ing for events at this time.

Glas­gow said the NCC’s ini­tials plans al­so gave lit­tle in­di­ca­tion as to how fi­nances for these events would be dis­trib­uted.

His wor­ry was that giv­en the ad­di­tion­al fi­nan­cial costs in­curred to have these events in safe zones, pro­mot­ers would be forced to cut costs which like­ly would  lead to artistes be­ing dropped from the events.

“Our artists and cre­atives have not earned a dol­lar, most of them, prob­a­bly 85% of them have not earned a dol­lar in al­most two years. If you have those rush events as I put it in Feb­ru­ary, no­body could say how many artistes would get gigs in these event you’re plan­ning,” he said

Glas­gow al­so ex­pressed the con­cern that hav­ing safe zone events could al­so prompt the un-vac­ci­nat­ed to at­tempt to have their own un­sanc­tioned events which could fur­ther clog our health care in­sti­tu­tions.

“You have to think for the whole na­tion. They’re search­ing for peo­ple who think for the whole na­tion. If it’s not good for the whole na­tion, you know, don’t force around peo­ple. Give our­selves more time. And let’s tar­get Au­gust/Sep­tem­ber and have some good events with a plan that could be al­so be used as a mar­ket­ing tool. For the big re­turn of Trinidad’s Car­ni­val, God will­ing in 2023,” he said.