With bare­ly six weeks to go be­fore what would have been the cli­max of Car­ni­val 2022, plans have fi­nal­ly been an­nounced by the Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell for a se­ries of safe-zone events.

“A Taste of Car­ni­val” will com­prise on­ly a few com­po­nents of the an­nu­al fes­ti­val. There will be no street pa­rades, no rev­el­ry and no fetes. Just a se­ries of con­cert-style shows ac­ces­si­ble on­ly to the ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and in keep­ing with pub­lic health re­quire­ments and venues will be kept at 50 per cent ca­pac­i­ty, with con­trolled en­try and ex­it points and sani­ti­sa­tion up­on en­try.

Still to be re­vealed is an ac­tu­al cal­en­dar of events and de­tails of the shows to be staged dur­ing what lit­tle is left of the 2022 Car­ni­val sea­son.

Some stake­hold­ers are de­cid­ed­ly luke­warm on the idea, ar­gu­ing that it is too late to or­gan­ise and prop­er­ly stage car­ni­val-style events. They al­so con­tend that T&T Car­ni­val in a con­cert for­mat did not work last sea­son. Some stake­hold­ers have mean­while wel­comed the move, not­ing their sec­tors have been shut down dur­ing the pan­dem­ic and it is time for some form of re­sump­tion of ac­tiv­i­ty.

At a news con­fer­ence hours be­fore the Cul­ture Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment, T&T Pro­mot­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTPA) pres­i­dent Jerome “Rome” Pre­cil­la in­sist­ed that “de­ci­sions should be made way ear­li­er be­cause for us to put on any sem­blance or taste of Car­ni­val in six weeks’ time is ab­surd.”

In­stead, the TTPA wants to be­gin plan­ning now for Car­ni­val 2023.

Time is in­deed a con­cern. Pre-pan­dem­ic, it was cus­tom­ary to be­gin prepa­ra­tions for the next year’s fes­ti­val from Ash Wednes­day, shift­ing in­to a high­er gear dur­ing Ju­ly and Au­gust with the first of the band launch­es and build­ing up steadi­ly from Oc­to­ber on­ward, so by ear­ly Jan­u­ary ma­jor events were be­ing staged.

How­ev­er, this will not be Car­ni­val as usu­al, and con­sid­er­ing its so­cial and eco­nom­ic val­ue, even a dras­ti­cal­ly scaled-down fes­ti­val is bet­ter than none. To reap any kind of ben­e­fits from the ex­er­cise, there will have to be con­sid­er­able buy-in from the pub­lic, as well as en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try stake­hold­ers.

There­fore, based on the con­cerns raised by the TTPA, there is still a lot to be done by the Car­ni­val Work­ing Group to en­sure this ini­tia­tive gets off the ground prop­er­ly.

The val­ue of Car­ni­val to this coun­try should not be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed. An en­tire ecosys­tem has de­vel­oped over many decades around the an­nu­al fes­ti­val, rang­ing from front­line op­er­a­tors in ca­lyp­so, steel­pan and mas, to down­stream providers of a vast ar­ray of goods and ser­vices.

It is there­fore im­per­a­tive, even amidst the un­cer­tain­ties of COVID-19, that the Gov­ern­ment work with the var­i­ous stake­hold­ers to pick up the pieces and mo­bilise to re­gain the con­sid­er­able ground lost over the past two years.

While Car­ni­val was can­celled twice be­fore—dur­ing World War II from 1939-1945 and in 1972 due to a po­lio out­break—the sit­u­a­tion is not the same this time around. Go­ing for­ward will re­quire cre­ativ­i­ty and in­no­va­tion well be­yond the usu­al ap­proach­es to com­pos­ing ca­lyp­soes, de­sign­ing cos­tumes and or­gan­is­ing shows and com­pe­ti­tions.

Our usu­al claims of stag­ing “the great­est show on Earth” were al­ready be­ing test­ed in a more com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment with oth­er des­ti­na­tions vy­ing for the vis­i­tors and rev­enue gen­er­at­ed by car­ni­val-style events.

Re­gain­ing the ground lost dur­ing the pan­dem­ic will re­quire a lot of time and ef­fort.