TheCaribbeanCamera --- November 18, 2021

torontocarnival.ca The Festival Management Committee, producers of the Toronto Caribbean Carnival, is pleased to announce Michelle Lochan as the new Managing Director....

Michelle, daughter of the late calypso artist, Dick D’Juiceman Lochan, brings experience in economic development and operational management along with a longstanding family history in the carnival arts in Canada and abroad. In 2022 , the festival will be celebrating 55 years of carnival in Canada and we are looking forward to a great year ahead.

Welcome aboard Michelle! @michellelochan #michellelochan #carnival @thecollabovibe #caribbeancamera.

ITS big laugh to read the foregoing......

FMC leaders left, is not a loss to CCC CARIBANA, it was a liability to its main sponsor. . When we changed the P&E committee to FMC that was an action to isolate the Festival from the Arts Foundation after the |Guidance of the court and the restoration of the TRADEMARK.. Those pretentious folks hijack the Festival and others sold CCC out for 30 silvers. FMC as privatized, had no community roots that is essential to an indigenous cultural festival rooted in emancipation celebrations. No long lasting COMMUNITY PARADE LASTED WITHOUT CULTURAL REPRESENTATION OF ITS COMMUNITY....

CCC DID THE WORK TO ANALYSE THE ECONOMIC IMPACT OF CARIBANA AND THE FMC was STILL SCRAMBLING BEHIND THE CITY for funds Recall the bet I had with JACKOBECK the budget director for $I dollar, I did not beg the City to investment in CCC to GET THE increase from $200,000 to* 800,000 it took a three year Business Plan & Budget presented to Jackobeck,, Sir Lincoln Alexander and Alving Curling that was divided between CCC, Bands leaders, Pan and Calypso.

When we went to Hong Kong both times I wrote a Business Proposal presented to the Italian Provincial Minister to get the $360,000 dollars from the province.

Success comes from innovation, creation and vision.. CARIBANA FESTIVAL was a vision of the Immigrants .I developed an advertising program integrated in the parade for the Federal Government and went to Ottawa to get the $200,000 they invested in advertising the Federal Programs.

FMC was just a spur without any lasting vision. We have new technology, expanded market and the World Wlde Web so why are we still begging. . CCC Negotiated a deal with Royal Bank to pay the CCC CEO at $100,000 a year so they could draw 20,000. new customers by inserting a Royal Bank costume band.

WHERE ARE OUR MARKETEERS?

THE CARIBANA FESTIVAL expanded and emerged into a International business cultural entity but the managers have been stuck in greed, cultural blindness and lack of insight and imagination.

"Our Emancipation Heritage will never die. Our Cultural Caribbean Arts will live on."

We need to redesign the product to be presented in the current market where ever they are. in the world CCC and Caribbean people wont fail/ e.g See Pan as a new musical instrument with a world market for sales, new music in a world market for sales. performances in new market for enjoyment and entertainment beyond the festival. Business success is innovation and creation injected into skilled marketing for customer appreciation. Look at the historical business.

The City invest 800,000 dollars for economic value exceeding 400 million dollars,annually. CCC is still the biggest investment return to the City and they know it ask the restaurants, Hotels,Taxi, DRIVERS, Parking attendants, Gift Shops and the list goes on.

In this world of new opportunities there is no room for begging. SHOW THE PEOPLE THE BENEFITS OF THEIR INVESTMENT IN YOUR PRODUCT, -- No one walks away from a bag of money.

D.H

RE Toronto Caribbean Carnival (TCC), aka Caribana, you may have read my previous posts criticizing the Festival Management Committee’s (FMC) arts policies over the years. Now let me tell you what FMC got right.

Since 2006, Joe Halstead has led the FMC board of directors, a small core of part-time executives, 1 full-time staff person, a team of part-time employees, and an army of steadfast volunteers who have planned and managed the production, presentation, and promotion of one of the largest Caribbean festivals in the world. They did this in adverse circumstances, with uncooperative arts partners, and outright hostility from certain quarters in the Caribbean community. Unresolved issues and bad blood from the demise of the previous administration – Caribbean Cultural Community (CCC) – never quite went away and continued to drain the energy and attention of the FMC for most of its tenure with costly lawsuits and negative publicity....

Imagine for a moment the complexity of a festival like TCC. It requires the engagement of a vast array of municipal services – police, EMS, sanitation, health and safety departments – and the securing of large venues, all which come with a bevy of bylaw requirements, permits and protocols that must be satisfied. This takes up months of planning and a big chunk of the festival budget.

To present a festival program (mostly outdoor) of such magnitude over a 2-week plus period you need to rent many tents of various sizes, fencing, tables and chairs, set up internal communications and transportation networks; erect signage, Port-o-potties, stages, bleachers, sound and light equipment; organize in advance box office and ticketing services, catering and hospitality services; and coordinate technical crew and train volunteers. And this all has to be in place and functioning at multiple locations. Almost all the above services and materials above have to be paid for in advance.

coordinates and regulates the participation of legions of vendors and community groups and individuals, and manages the contractual expectations of the many corporate sponsors and businesses without whose support the festival will fail. Insurance a is a big cost and can run as high as $100,000. Has anyone given thought to whose personal assets are on the line when loans have to taken out to cover shortfalls?

FMC must manage the booking and technical requirements of hundreds of artists and artistic personnel; schmooze the politicians and VIPs whose support is vital to the festival’s success; and design and roll out a P.R. campaign / media strategy to promote the festival program, drive ticket sales, and to document the festival.

Starting in the fall, FMC has to complete and submit detailed grant applications to funding agencies about the coming year’s plans, its rationale, and prepare sponsorship packages. The amount of rolling deadline and hoops to jump through would make your head spin. And it has to manage the cash flow. On the income side this involves the receipt of grant monies which are usually late; sponsors’ cash and in-kind support; box office revenues (mostly received the day of an event); vendor and other fees the festival generates; and revenue from the sale of broadcast licenses and other festival products. The FMC is inundated by requests from all sides for access from small operators and many people looking for complimentary tickets and favours. On the ground, you imagine the accounting challenges of dealing with community entrepreneurs looking to make a quick dollar.

FMC could do all this right and still face disaster should the weather turn nasty and box office projections fall short. Emergency situations that arise when you bring massive crowds together create unexpected crises, including occasional accidental injury and God forbid, even death. The problems created by members of the public “storming” the Grand Parade reveals the ugly and disrespectful attitude towards the tradition of carnival masquerade still rampant in our community. Thankfully, we have been lucky. The Grand Parade is nothing short of a miracle, when you consider all the things that could go wrong.

After this massive undertaking is completed each year, FMC must collect data and carefully review all aspects of the festival execution. When everyone else has taken off for the cottage or on summer holidays in August, the FMC team works feverishly to calculate revenues and pay its bills. Deadline lines for next year's grants loom. Audited reports must be submitted to the City and funding agencies within weeks. Revenue shortfalls require incredible amount of juggling of payment priorities, as creditors have to be pacified and payment schedules negotiated.

Joe Halstead (Chairman), Eddison Doyle (Chief Financial Officer) and Chris Alexander (Chief Operations Officer) know well the challenges of managing this internationally renowned festival. They have successfully produced and presented a festival program every year for the last 15 years and delivered clean audited reports, an accomplishment that boggles the mind when one considers what is required. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude for their years of service to the Caribbean community, the people of Toronto, the Province, and Canada.

I wish each of them continued success in their new ventures. I am deeply grateful for all the opportunities they have afforded me to work on the FMC’s team and to contribute to this amazing festival. The FMC may not have met the high expectations of many of us in the arts community who dream of a pan-Caribbean festival with a holistic vision of the Caribbean arts in Canada, but they have for 15 years delivered some of the most exciting and exhilarating festival experiences you could imagine, and they have managed to do this with a high level of calm, maturity and professionalism.

Their departures come at a critical juncture for the festival. The recent appointment of several new board members offer hope for generational change and new approaches. However, the underlying dysfunction within the Carnival arts community still remains. All previous efforts to forge cooperation and organizational development among the festival’s arts producers - mas’, steelpan and calypso/soca organizations – have failed miserably. The old inter-island rivalries and distrust are still painfully evident.

What’s next? I pray this next generation of leaders will find people with the right combination of arts and entertainment administrative credentials, who can forge a vision of the Caribbean Carnival arts in Canada that will inspire a fragmented community. I earnestly hope they will continue to build on the legacy of what Halstead, Doyle and Alexander have accomplished. Walk good, Sirs!

Roger Gibbs

Colin Rickards

To:pvpalmer@yahoo.com Wed., Dec. 30, 2009 at 1:35 a.m.

Dear Vere: You say: I see this hand-off as a dangerous practice, which could move this festival further away from the community that started it, and to whom it belongs. Probably, but, then, who -- in the community – could run it, as things currently are? I'm not at all sure what you mean by a hand-off in the changing of the FMC Guard? ...

An advertisement was put out in the community newspapers, applicants applied, a four-person selection committee did the interviews. Somebody came out on top. What more can one ask? I really don’t think it was other than transparent. Anyone could have applied, and would have been seen. I do hear that one out-of-town person, on being told she didn’t get the CEO job, has started a campaign calling for a review, and demanding: “How could they turn down someone like me?” Had there simply been a direct appointment without any transparency, I would have been the first to shout.

I actually happen know one of those who applied for the General Manager, Operations post. (Didn’t get it, and I wasn’t really surprised, as the Carnival Arts strengths are elsewhere). I got no grumbles from the candidate about the way the two interviews were conducted.

My own feeling is that Denise Herrera Jackson will make a good job of it. She is corporate connected, a good administrator, and also has a solid track record of community activity. She Also a Trini! (By the by, there was a mistake in my Column, as she was not a member of the FMC Advisory Board. She was a member of the Board which put together the Souvenir Magazine, a totally different matter.) Of course you are correct in that profit, or at least self-sufficiency is not attempted, but isn’t that what the CCC was always charged with ignoring?

Your other point – over a long period – that Caribana should not be dependent on government hand-outs is also correct. Yet previous Boards abandoned fundraising events, and profit-producing ones (like the Ball, a victim of political correctness) altogether.

Were the CAG a real organization, they might have something to say. I don’t think Henry is even in the country.

Colin

Editor:

The Toronto Caribbean Carnival (TCC), also known as, Caribana, at its core, is a festival of masquerade or street theatre. The steelpan and calypso/soca components of TCC, though artistically very significant for the festival’s unique brand, command far less priority in the festival organization and program.

...

Although the festival is called “Caribbean”, it is really a Trinidad and Tobago-controlled production — with support from Toronto’s Eastern Caribbean neighboring island communities and the Guyanese community. French and Spanish Caribbean participation is minimal at best. Jamaicans have created their own Jamaica-centric Jambana.

This is far removed from the original festival idea, coined in 1967, which was a much more “Caribbean” affair, or at least, had a more inclusive model.

The festival is a business, after all, and the mas’ producers — the dozen or so major band leaders — operate with Festival Management Committee (FMC) approval, as an exclusive cartel within the festival community, and jealously retain control on who is allowed to participate.

The competition aspects of the huge Grand Parade, Children’s Carnival and King and Queen productions, go along an embedded colonial-era arts competition model; one we’ve brought to Toronto and elsewhere, with our carnivals.

The prize monies and bragging rights bring out the worst practices. It’s a culture of “dog-eat-dog” that encourages “crabs in a barrel” behaviour, where cooperation is purely driven, by self-interest alone, and not for what’s best for the art of mas’ or for the public.

This pitting of festival mas’ producers against each other, is mainly why the Grand Parade suffers from perennial execution problems, and why the band leaders show little public support for the FMC, its parent company.

Any new player must deal with this cartel, or face exclusion. As one bandleader so eloquently put it… “Dey cah come in hey and tief we money!”

There is no mechanism for change. The City of Toronto — the festival’s core funder and enabler — is only concerned with clean audited financial reports, which the FMC, to its credit, has dutifully produced.

The City is loath to interfere; it’s bad optics to be seen as dictating to the Black/Caribbean, or any community, on how to run its business.

This pitting of festival mas’ producers against each other, is mainly why the Grand Parade suffers from perennial execution problems, and why the band leaders show little public support for the FMC, its parent company.

An individual band will deliberately delay or block the Parade, to gain some perceived advantage — paying audience be damned. The integrity of the Parade? Not my problem!

FMC’s efforts to develop new events and grow existing ones, like its Gala event, receives no support from mas’ bandleaders; that is, unless they are receiving an award,

It’s an outdated type of arts development approach that is rightly frowned upon in the Canadian context, but is still alive and well in the TCC. Imagine running a company, where your department heads are at each other’s throats, refuse to cooperate for the festival’s benefit and try to undermine each other.

Welcome to the Toronto Caribbean Carnival. We love we bacchanal.

Roger Gibbs

This is one of the reasons why Caribana failed: Some folks believed the carnival culture and calypso music belonged to one island and was not the culture of other Caribbean islands......

They probably didn't know that the folks who started this event were from several other islands which shows carnival was also part of their culture. Byron Lee and the Dragonaires was the entertainment band from the early years and it was from Jamaica. On the road we danced to calypso music and on the island we danced to “SKA, Rock Steady” and later to Reggae. Byron Lee and the Dragonaires played music for the Americans as well as music for calypso folks and Reggae dancers. It was a very versatile band with its music delivery.

...

I may be wrong but I believe a problem that once haunted the T&T carnival was: T&T blacks believe the culture belongs to descendants from slavery, so people whose fore-parents were not slaves were usurpers. There was slavery in all the Caribbean islands and South America and carnival was also part of their culture. Brazil had the most famous carnival celebration and was known worldwide. Carnival was copied by several Asian countries who also copied the Brazil dance moves.

It was in the 80s that Byron Lee was removed from the CCC entertainment package and bands from T&T were added. And of course things started going downhill then. The new bands from T&T were not able to draw the large crowds Byron Lee did for several years. In the 1990 there were over 8 music bands from T&T who came to Toronto and wanted jobs. The entertainment budget moved from $79k in 1994 to $179K after I was replaced as the manager of entertainment.

The CCC board didn't like my idea of hiring more local musicians and entertainers. I replaced Selwyn Joseph as MC for Kiddies carnival with a young girl who did a fantastic job. Selwyn held that position for several years and I changed it, to expose the youths to Kiddies carnival. I knew Selwyn very well, but I had to make the change.

Later when new boards were voted into power, greed and corruption came along with them.

No one is actually addressing Roger's ideas to point out some corrections or faults, so they can come up with better ideas. Being critical is not the right answer for dialogs to move things forward.

I still have the answer he sent me in response to my article on FMC. I don’t have to remind him of his error then. He has finally seen the light and it’s time we use his new vision to help the 2024 festival organizers.