BitDepth#1429

Mark Lyndersay

AT THE Central Bank on September 27, a panel of Carnival stakeholders considered the current state of the festival, under the theme Re-engineering the Economics of Carnival for Sustainability.

It's not as if there were no talk shops to consider the critical issues facing TT's Carnival before this, but the Central Bank's Kevin Finch offered the rationale for the financial regulators' involvement.

"As time progresses, we have witnessed the demise of what used to be staple events and the rise of a new genre of Carnival-related activities. As economists, we can surmise that Carnival suffers from several structural issues, many of which oscillate around its financial viability."

Moderator Carla Parris, an intellectual property (IP) lawyer, noted, "Carnival is an ecosystem made up of a variety of people whose goods and services contribute revenue to our economy and contribute substantial foreign exchange.

"When you think of the logistical aspect, we have the people who drive the trucks, who are involved behind the scenes. Although all these people generate revenue, what is quite disturbing is that there are income sources that are not being tapped into and not understood by creatives, government agencies, and even by legislators?"

Costatt president Dr Keith Nurse, who wrote a pivotal paper on the globalisation of Carnival a quarter of a century ago, noted that the TT Carnival is "The most globalised Carnival and the most globalised festival. There are more replications of TT Carnival than of any other festival on planet Earth. I don't know if the population really understands this. (It is also) one of the festivals with the highest domestic participation.

"Trinidad Carnival is not just Port of Spain Carnival, there are 50 to 55 carnivals happening in Trinidad, all at the same time, making it one of the top three to five festivals in the world in terms of national participation."

In this context, the panel lamented the lack of structured information that can be used to measure, analyse and plan the annual festival.

Visitor arrivals and spending are tracked across 19 days for Carnival, but the expanding reach of the festival, which really begins formally on Boxing Day, and the efforts by event promoters, performers and steelbands to continue working throughout the year call for an expanded idea of when Carnival happens and the real impact that it has on the national economy.

"You cannot manage anything that you can't measure because you don't know if you're doing better this year than last year or 20 years ago," Nurse said.

"If you're actually not collecting data and capturing data on something that is so important to us, it means you are being left behind by the world. I've been doing research in this area for 25 years (and) our capacity to measure is worse now than it was 20 years ago.

"We all cherish this thing called TT Carnival, but we're not investing in it from a strategic standpoint because we view it as an event, as a party, as a really good time,