Towards a better Carifesta

CARIFESTA HAS given us much to celebrate, but it has also given us much to consider when it comes to efficiently organising events. Consider Camille Hunte’s report in the Express on August 20. Hunte wrote, “Not much can be done for patrons complaining about not being able to get tickets to Carifesta XIV shows. This is according to Carifesta project manager John Arnold, who explained yesterday that certain venues can only accommodate a certain number of people.”

Arnold’s response both puzzled and disappointed me. It reminded me of how we fail to take many factors into consideration that plague events organised in this country and consequently we repeat the same problems. We can only improve by noting the problems that cropped up in Carifesta.

I am by no means what you would call a social butterfly, but even I heard people complaining about not being able to get tickets to shows like Decades of Dance, Rhythms of the Caribbean and Bitter Cassava.

One person told me he lined up more than three hours ahead of the event – as we had all been told to do – only to discover that the tickets had already been sold out. What went on there?

There are actually many problems for you to investigate, Arnold, because it is your job to address all the snafus associated with Carifesta.

Here’s my list:

1. Why were people required to line up three hours before an event in this age of technology? Why can’t people buy tickets online?

2. Why could people buy only one ticket for a show? Most people attend events with at least one other person so you mean to tell me you wanted every single person in a family to line up for tickets? Isn’t that one of the reasons for such long lines?

3. With all the people lining up for events, how could there be any empty seats? I attended the play Moon on a Rainbow Shawl at NAPA on August 17 and nearly half of the lower floor had empty seats in the section marked reserved. Who reserved all those empty seats? People had to sit at the higher levels while the cast had to look out over all those empty seats.

4. What is the logic behind free tickets for Carifesta? I think the expectation should be that people have to pay something to see the shows or attend workshops. We really need to stop supporting this feeling that everything should be free in this country.

OK. Enough griping. Here are some solutions:

1. Organise events far enough in advance of Carifesta and sell tickets online for individual shows or ticket packages for multiple shows. Put a low price like $5 for a show or $20 for a package deal of three or four shows. People spend more than that to tap up their cellphones, and this would help to eliminate lines.

2. Study your ticket sales online and offer more than one show for the popular events. Early ticket sales would indicate the types of shows people most want to patronise. Some of these shows – like Moon on a Rainbow Shawl – were spectacular productions, and it was a shame to do all that work and pump all that money into a production that shows only once.

3. Consider that being in charge of an event means that a huge part of your job is to put something in place to rectify the mistakes made so that we don’t perpetuate the same mistakes in the future. Investigate why your special reserve section was often empty and why shows were sold out before the time people were meant to line up for tickets. Seek a solution so these problems don’t happen again.

One final important note here, and that has to do with event etiquette. Don’t bring your screaming baby to disrupt entire events or shows. Get a babysitter, and if you can’t find one, stay home. That’s what I did when I had babies. It is unfair to disrupt everyone’s experience.

Even people like me with big mouths are reluctant to complain because we don’t want to look like baby haters. We just want to enjoy the show. This problem transcends Carifesta. It’s a problem that the organisers of all events in TT should handle.

I celebrate the many successes of Carifesta while pointing out the room for growth. TT should be a centre for Caribbean tourism, but it requires a lot of work to achieve success on a truly respectable level.