Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase

Every year Car­ni­val comes around, I see gov­ern­ments spend­ing mil­lions on it and I get an­noyed. As a so­cial ad­vo­cate fight­ing for equal ac­cess to sup­port for autis­tic peo­ple in T&T, I know the long-last­ing im­pact that even one per cent of that mon­ey could have if it were di­rect­ed to­ward ed­u­ca­tion ser­vices and ther­a­py. But then, I am al­so a his­to­ri­an who teach­es the his­to­ry and cul­ture of T&T, so I ful­ly un­der­stand the cru­cial role of cul­ture in shap­ing our na­tion­al iden­ti­ty. I al­so un­der­stand that we need to in­vest in our cul­tur­al her­itage, mar­ket it prop­er­ly and al­low it a chance to de­vel­op. My ques­tion then, is how do we do this with­out the state fi­nan­cial­ly prop­ping up Car­ni­val every year?

It is not yes­ter­day that we are cel­e­brat­ing Car­ni­val. I mean, isn’t it the “Great­est show on Earth,” and a big chunk of our en­er­gy, tal­ent and re­sources is fo­cused on it every year?

We shut down the coun­try on Car­ni­val Mon­day and Tues­day, and even some days be­fore, cit­i­zens miss work be­cause they fete “too hard” or leave work ear­ly be­cause they have ‘ah fete to go to’. It is the main event on our na­tion­al cal­en­dar and I would ex­pect that we have a clear­ly out­lined plan for Car­ni­val’s fu­ture growth and de­vel­op­ment. But some­times I ex­pect too much.

First, let’s ask why there is such a high de­pen­den­cy on state fund­ing. Just a few days ago, the San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee said they were sus­pend­ing the com­pet­i­tive part of San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val 2026 be­cause of re­duced fund­ing.

The com­mit­tee said it can­not af­ford to pay prizes be­cause its al­lo­ca­tion is $200,000 less than last year. This, I do not un­der­stand. Is it that the com­mit­tee was sit­ting by and wait­ing for gov­ern­ment funds all this time? I mean, since 2025 Car­ni­val end­ed, were there no at­tempts to plan for this year’s cel­e­bra­tions, to en­gage stake­hold­ers and to source funds?

You telling me that all those busi­ness­es and com­pa­nies in San Fer­nan­do, and not one is will­ing to spon­sor prizes? Or is it that the com­mit­tee did not ac­tive­ly pur­sue oth­er fund­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties be­cause of the his­tor­i­cal re­liance on state funds?

This is my biggest is­sue—we need to move away from state fund­ing. This means we need to have a com­pre­hen­sive plan to en­gage cor­po­rate spon­sors and to mon­e­tise the ac­tu­al cel­e­bra­tions.

The good thing is we don’t have to guess our way; we can study mod­els of oth­er Car­ni­vals that have fig­ured out how to turn it in­to sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty. Not­ting Hill Car­ni­val is wide­ly es­ti­mat­ed to con­tribute around £400 mil­lion to the UK econ­o­my each year, while Carib­ana in Toron­to is of­ten cit­ed as con­tribut­ing about Can $467 mil­lion to Cana­da’s GDP.

So, the ques­tion isn’t whether Car­ni­val has val­ue, it is whether we in T&T are will­ing to mea­sure it prop­er­ly and build a fair sys­tem to cap­ture and rein­vest a por­tion of it back in­to the cul­ture.

So, what should we be do­ing? Well, first, we need to get rid of the de­pen­den­cy syn­drome. State sup­port should be en­abling, not en­ti­tling. When fund­ing al­ways comes from the gov­ern­ment, then or­gan­is­ers will see no need to make long-term plans. I mean, a fes­ti­val that shuts down a coun­try for two days can­not be man­aged like a last-minute lime. Cul­ture is not a wel­fare pro­gramme—it is a prop­er in­dus­try and in­dus­tries plan, bud­get, mar­ket, mea­sure and rein­vest.

This would mean start­ing with da­ta col­lec­tion. How much state funds are dis­bursed an­nu­al­ly and who ben­e­fits from it? It means im­ple­ment­ing prop­er mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion pro­ce­dures, some­thing that is se­ri­ous­ly lack­ing in T&T.

We need to pay more at­ten­tion to trans­paren­cy. I mean, any com­mit­tee, group or or­gan­i­sa­tion re­ceiv­ing pub­lic funds for Car­ni­val should be man­dat­ed to pub­licly pro­vide a clear ac­count of how that mon­ey is used.

We don’t need to see any long au­dit doc­u­ment but how much state fund­ing was al­lo­cat­ed and what it was spent on. It is not about sham­ing or bash­ing any­one, it is sim­ply about trans­paren­cy, pro­fes­sion­al­ism and build­ing trust and cred­i­bil­i­ty. In the end, I pay tax­es and I would like to know what they are be­ing spent on.

Next, we need strate­gic plan­ning. We cel­e­brate Car­ni­val every year and plan­ning should be con­tin­u­ous. In fact, we should start en­gag­ing spon­sors as soon as we’re done parad­ing the streets this year. Then maybe we would avoid can­celling com­pe­ti­tions like the San Fer­nan­do Car­ni­val.

Mon­etis­ing Car­ni­val doesn’t take away from our cul­ture. In fact, it helps it to grow and flour­ish. We can pro­tect the pub­lic spir­it of Car­ni­val while still build­ing smart rev­enue streams through bet­ter use of broad­cast and stream­ing rights for the di­as­po­ra, Car­ni­val mer­chan­dise, amongst oth­er things.

If Car­ni­val is tru­ly our great­est show on earth, then it is time we stop run­ning it on hand­outs and start man­ag­ing it like the na­tion­al in­dus­try it is, so it can stand on its own feet.