Ot­to Car­ring­ton

Se­nior Re­porter

ot­to.car­ring­ton@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Copy­right Col­lec­tion Or­gan­i­sa­tion (TTC­CO) has thrown its full sup­port be­hind Gov­ern­ment’s pro­posed plan to re­place the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) with a new Na­tion­al Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion, de­scrib­ing the move as a for­ward-think­ing and nec­es­sary step for the coun­try’s cul­tur­al and cre­ative in­dus­tries.

In a state­ment, TTC­CO ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent As­ten Isaac said the tran­si­tion would rep­re­sent a ma­jor shift in how Car­ni­val and oth­er cul­tur­al as­sets are man­aged, mov­ing from a sea­son­al fo­cus to a year-round eco­nom­ic dri­ver.

Isaac em­pha­sised that Car­ni­val must now be treat­ed not just as a cel­e­bra­tion, but as a struc­tured in­dus­try ca­pa­ble of gen­er­at­ing sus­tained rev­enue, ex­pand­ing tourism and cre­at­ing jobs while strength­en­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s glob­al cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty.

A key el­e­ment of TTC­CO’s sup­port lies in the pro­posed com­mis­sion’s re­port­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty (IP) man­age­ment, an area Isaac de­scribed as “crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant” to the long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the sec­tor.

He not­ed that IP as­sets, in­clud­ing copy­right, trade­marks, brand­ing, li­cens­ing, broad­cast­ing rights and dig­i­tal con­tent, rep­re­sent sig­nif­i­cant un­tapped eco­nom­ic val­ue for cre­ators, per­form­ers, pro­mot­ers and the State.

“This is a ma­jor pol­i­cy ad­vance­ment,” Isaac said, adding that Trinidad and To­ba­go has long pro­duced world-class cul­ture but has not ful­ly cap­i­talised on own­ing, pro­tect­ing and ex­port­ing that val­ue.

The state­ment comes against the back­drop of a March 2026 Cab­i­net de­ci­sion to re­peal the NCC Act and es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Fes­ti­vals Com­mis­sion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NFCTT), a broad­er body ex­pect­ed to over­see mul­ti­ple na­tion­al fes­ti­vals while ad­dress­ing long­stand­ing con­cerns over gov­er­nance, fi­nan­cial man­age­ment and stake­hold­er pay­ments with­in the ex­ist­ing frame­work.

The pro­posed com­mis­sion is al­so ex­pect­ed to place greater em­pha­sis on com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion and the struc­tured de­vel­op­ment of cul­tur­al in­dus­tries, align­ing with Gov­ern­ment’s wider push to­ward a di­ver­si­fied, in­no­va­tion-dri­ven econ­o­my.

TTC­CO said it be­lieves the in­clu­sion of IP at the core of the new body’s man­date sig­nals a shift to­ward a more mod­ern, sus­tain­able and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly com­pet­i­tive cre­ative sec­tor.

“This is a clear step in the right di­rec­tion, to­ward build­ing a cul­tur­al econ­o­my that works for the ben­e­fit of all stake­hold­ers,” Isaac stat­ed.