CULTURAL ACTIVIST Elvis Radgman hopes the latest attempt at consultations for the October and national carnivals will not be “exercises in futility.”
Radgman said he fed up of consultations for events in Tobago, which he believes have yielded little or no benefit,
He was speaking at a Carnival stakeholders’ consultation at the Division of Community Development, Youth Development and Sport, Glen Road, Scarborough, on May 15.
The event, which targeted mas bandleaders and other members of the cultural fraternity, sought views on how Tobago’s October carnival and the island’s input in the national Carnival could be improved.
Niall George, assistant secretary, Division of Tourism, Culture, Antiquities and Transportation; Shelly Trim, the division’s administrator; Kern Cowan, Tobago Festival Commission Ltd’s CEO; and Jesse Taylor, cultural officer II, Department of Culture, sat at the head table. By Newsday’s count, approximately 50 people were in the audience.
During the open forum, Radgman said the THA must revisit how it views the October carnival – now in its fourth year – in the context of other carnivals in the region and further afield.
He said if the THA is hosting the carnival, it must first bear in mind that Tobago is not “a carnival society,” and as such, must redouble its efforts to attract visitors to the island.
“We are now introducing it. We have had carnivals in the past but what we are trying to do now, we are trying to attract visitors,” he said.
“There are benchmarks all across the world where carnival is concerned. It is not new. So people are benchmarking what they see in Grenada, Barbados, Jamaica and they are benchmarking Tobago.”
Radgman, a former CEO of the Tobago Performing Arts Company, said the THA must also devise systems to gauge the carnival’s success against that of its regional counterparts.
[caption id="attachment_1155643" align="alignnone" width="819"] Cultural activist Elvis Radgman -[/caption]
“How about we take a look and see how we can really measure what we are doing to ensure that when we put something on the table, it measures up. So people are not just going to Tobago because they like Tobago. They are going to Tobago because Tobago has something to offer.”
He believes effective marketing is crucial.
“If we are not triggering the things from the back end from a marketing perspective, from a PR perspective, from a planning perspective, then what we do in the end is try to throw a lot of blame all over the place about all the reasons why it was not done.
“These are the people who are embarrassed. These are the people who are left out of pocket. These are the people who can’t really look at people because at the end of the day they owe them money.”
Radgman said fingers will be pointed at the Division of Culture, the Tobago Festivals Commission and any other organisation whom people believe was involved in the management of the event.
He said conversations about strategies to host events effectively have taken place “many times too many.
“These ar
