At 33, Naki­ta Hy­atali stands as one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most ver­sa­tile cre­atives, with a ca­reer span­ning fash­ion de­sign, car­ni­val pro­duc­tion, and cre­ative di­rec­tion. Her jour­ney has been shaped by pa­tience, ed­u­ca­tion, and hands-on ex­pe­ri­ence, a path she de­scribes as de­lib­er­ate rather than rushed.

As a gy­nae­co­log­i­cal on­col­o­gist, cer­vi­cal can­cer to me is not just a sta­tis­tic. It is a di­ag­no­sis I de­liv­er all too of­ten and a sto­ry that does not al­ways end as we hoped.

As a graph­ic de­sign­er by train­ing, she has built a sol­id, 15-year ca­reer in graph­ic de­sign and al­so ex­pand­ed her cre­ativ­i­ty or­gan­i­cal­ly in­to fash­ion and cos­tume de­sign, where she has spent the last decade bring­ing char­ac­ters and con­cepts to life. Win­ches­ter is al­so a wife and moth­er of two, roles that, like her work, de­mand her en­er­gy, de­vot­ed pres­ence and con­stant care. A lover of colour, tex­ture and trav­el, her cre­ative jour­ney places vi­brance and evo­lu­tion at the core, and she has re­cent­ly tak­en her tal­ents in­to a new field with the cre­ation of her self-care jour­nal, Root­ed.

There are many chal­lenges that we go through as women as we age. Dur­ing menopause, women tend to ex­pe­ri­ence many dif­fer­ent symp­toms. Typ­i­cal­ly, women ex­pe­ri­ence menopause be­tween the ages of 45 and 55 years. Some women ex­pe­ri­ence this tran­si­tion ear­li­er or lat­er in life. Menopause can be de­fined as the end of men­stru­a­tion. Usu­al­ly, it is di­ag­nosed af­ter about one year with­out a pe­ri­od.

In a Car­ni­val econ­o­my dri­ven by speed—faster re­leas­es, loud­er hooks, vi­ral mo­ments mea­sured in hours rather than years—Den­zel Coutain is mov­ing de­lib­er­ate­ly against the cur­rent.

If Jah­mike “Chris­to” Bonas had not gone on In­sta­gram on a par­tic­u­lar day last year, one of his best songs may nev­er have ex­ist­ed. It was a quick DM (di­rect mes­sage) to a pro­duc­er about a con­cept that even­tu­al­ly led to the cre­ation of Doux Doux Dar­lin — one of the sweet­est tunes for the 2026 Car­ni­val sea­son.

Lo­cal su­per-pro­duc­er Michael “Tano” Mon­tano is back with an­oth­er groovy rid­dim set to take over the Caribbean’s air­waves. The Block­buster Rid­dim, fea­tur­ing GBM Nu­tron, Kes, Full Blown, Mi­cal Te­ja and Coutain, al­ready has the pub­lic buzzing.

Reez Mu­sic rock/fu­sion group will add to T&T's melt­ing pot mu­si­cal brew land­scape on Sat­ur­day (Jan­u­ary 31), when they per­form at an event where part pro­ceeds go to the UNICEF sup­port­ed ini­tia­tive "The Child Friend­ly Space." This fa­cil­i­tates a safe en­vi­ron­ment for mi­grant chil­dren to learn and play.

A pow­er­ful trib­ute to so­ca and ca­lyp­so leg­ends re­turns to the spot­light on Wednes­day at Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) and Thurs­day at South­ern Acad­e­my for Per­form­ingg Arts (SAPA), from 6 pm night­ly, fol­low­ing the over­whelm­ing suc­cess of its in­au­gur­al stag­ing last Feb­ru­ary.

With words of praise, prayer and thanks­giv­ing echo­ing through the streets of Wood­brook, devo­tees and sup­port­ers gath­ered on Jan­u­ary 24 for the an­nu­al Obata­la Fes­ti­val—a sa­cred cel­e­bra­tion ho­n­our­ing one of the most revered Orisa in the Ifa Orisa tra­di­tion.

For Hilton Trinidad’s Lav­ish, the fo­cus has al­ways been less about how many peo­ple can be packed in­to a space and more about how the night flows.

Rap­so band 3canal re­turns to the Car­ni­val stage with an­oth­er ex­plo­sive the­atri­cal pro­duc­tion, this time sum­mon­ing a gath­er­ing of Mad Jabs.