Tobago Festivals Commission gets new operations manager: Rayshawn Pierre ready for life’s challenges

RAYSHAWN PIERRE, newly-appointed operations manager, Tobago Festivals Commission Ltd (TFCL), recalls her mother once telling her to “run my own race.”

And for much of her young life, Pierre, 33, has done just that, with a drive, passion and determination that continues to define her work as an artist in Tobago’s cultural space.

During her four years as artistic director of the Tobago Performing Arts Company (TPAC), Pierre helped to transform the organisation into a regional cultural powerhouse.

Under her watch, two of the TPAC’s major productions – Bitter Cassava (Dr Lester Efebo Wilkinson play) and Queen of the Road (in tribute to Calypso Rose) – received critical acclaim, cementing the company’s status a dominant force in the country’s performing arts landscape.

“I am thankful to be awarded the opportunities that I have been given,” Pierre told Newsday on October 7.

“I have never taken an opportunity that I know I cannot do and don’t absolutely have the skill. I have taken on things where I knew the challenges. I have taken on things where I have said, ‘You will grow through this experience. It is going to be hard but you will figure it out.’ I have had those experiences.

“But I am both satisfied and always ready and willing to rise to the occasion because I am driven by challenge and difficulty. I am sharpened by uniquely touch experiences. And I have gotten better as a result of it.”

She said her new role as TFCL’s operations manager offers a challenge.

“Timing is everything for me and I felt I had done all that I could do,” she said of her decision to move on from the TPAC.

Pierre said she also felt it was time to pass the proverbial baton.

“I am absolute believer in room to pass. I believe you have to make space for other people to come through the doors and in doing so, an opportunity was presented for me and it fell within my area of expertise, but moreso my areas of interest and festivals, with all of its challenges.”

Pierre said as a young professional she desperately wanted to continue to contribute to Tobago’s cultural space in the areas of production, performance and events.

“I just saw the opportunity as the right fit at this point in time in my life, given my 33 years living on the ground.”

She took up the appointment in July at a time when the commission was already preparing for the upcoming October carnival.

The team, she said, is predicting that the festival will see an increase in patronage by at least 25-30 per cent from previous years.

Pierre said people can expect some “newness” to the festival, titled Tobago Carnival Unveiled: Mud, Mas, Music, from October 24-26.

“People will see it. They will feel it. It will hit them like a tonne of bricks.”

She said several of the teething issues that have plagued the carnival over the past three years are also being actively addressed.

“You can also expect that the people who are responsible for ensuring the safety and the success of the carnival, that those people have been put to work and they will deliver.”

Pierre said when hosting “big undertakings” like carnival, it is often easy to point out all of the things that went wrong and pass blame.

“But I think collectively, collaboratively, we are at a point where all the blame has been cast aside and we really just want solutions. So Tobagonians can expect solutions.”

Tobagonians, she said, also have a major role to play in ensuring the festival’s success and continuity.

“There is a ‘part doing’ that is required from the general population. So they can expect to be asked to do their part. In planning and execution, you can do and say so much but the end users of a carnival are the people. People move it, people live it, people breathe life into it, people give it its heart and its pulse and, as a result of that, the onus is on Tobagonians to come out, to show up, to support.

“We can’t know if the systems that we put in place work unless the people interface with it. Unless we get the feedback and genuine participation from the public that tells us this is where we have to set our benchmarks, this is how we have to reimagine and redesign the experience so that it fits with the general public.”

Pierre said Tashia Burris, the substantive Secretary of the Division of Tourism, Culture, Antiquities and Transportation, gave the carnival “a good base” over the past three years.

She added temporary secretary Zorisha Hackett is excited about the event and is providing the support that is necessary to move the event forward.

As operations manager, Pierre is required to oversee all of the festivals that are produced under the ambit of the commission, including the upcoming Blue Food Festival and the annual Tobago Heritage Festival, the island’s signature event.

She is also tasked specifically with managing the events unit of the organisation and to develop new, systematic, innovative approaches to building festivals, relationships with stakeholders and generally offering more ingenuity in how the commission delivers its products.

Analyses of the data collated by the research team from the commission’s events and devising strategies to improve them also form part of her portfolio, she said.

“It is a bit of production work, event work, management work. It is a combination of all of those things. Very different from TPAC but it still requires me to put my creative hat on, still requires me to put my managerial hat on, still requires me to put the hat that is love for the space, the people in the space and the culture.”

Regarding the fourth edition of the carnival, Pierre sees her role as straddling two scenarios.

“Every iteration of the carnival has been marked by two things: a forward-facing strategy about how it can be made better but also deliberate attempts to improve on the things that did not work in previous years.

“So I am standing at the crossroads: on the one hand, a carnival that is young, that is foetal, that is looking towards the future and, on the other hand, a significant amount of willingness and effort to improve.”

From an operational standpoint, she said, the past few weeks has about “checking all of the boxes.”

Pierre told Newsday, “Carnival is a mammoth undertaking. Contrary to popular belief, it requires an eco-system of a considerable amount of players.”

To this end, Pierre applauded the work of the commission’s CEO Kern Cowan, whom she described as “diligent and devoted to the island.”

She also praised the efforts of the entire TFCL team.

“It is about working with them to make sense of events from an execution perspective, from a risk management perspective, to work with regulatory services, to work with the stakeholders who we value considerably to ensure that they are considered in the conversation.”

Pierre said her job also involves working alongside the policy makers and advisory team to ensure that there is confluency from a policy planning to an execution standpoint.

“I stand in between all of it and I have to make contributions to a considerable amount of the areas.”

Pierre said she has always been a believer in Tobago’s potential to showcase its cultural heritage on the world stage.

She said the island’s performances at the recently concluded Carifesta in Barbados exemplified this.

“It was such a breath of fresh air being able to have such a heavy Tobago presence inside of a Carifesta Country Night. It has been done in the past but this time around, it was like Tobago really got a footing and an opportunity to showcase the unique talents and to lean on the unique creative expertise that comes from the space. That was my first joy.”

She added the TPAC was able to command the attention of its audiences by presenting the island’s indigenous traditions in a refreshing way.

“I was able to really appreciate how well they were able to merge their offerings inside of the overall Carifesta presentation. For me, it was about gratitude, respect, nostalgia and national pride.”

Saying the team worked well, Pierre singled out the contribution of Tonya Evans, who developed the country night and coordinated all of the rehearsals.

Pierre said from a design perspective, it was really exciting to put the ideas on pen and paper and then weave it into the overall flow of the show.

“We have so much outstanding talent in the space and that is exactly what Carifesta featured.”

For this reason, she believes the future of the performing arts in Tobago is in safe hands.

“It looks different from when I was a younger. I find that the young people are driven by incentives, not necessarily money. But they want to know that they will be managed in a particular way. They want to know that it benefits them.”

Pierre continued, “I am impressed with the generation that is post-millennial, Gen Z. I am so impressed with how they think, how they behave, how they reconcile their own feelings about things. I am impressed with how they invest. They are very sensitive to time. So we are in good hands.”

Even so, Pierre said they still need guidance.

“I think the Heritage (festival) showed the pulse on the ground where community groups are concerned, that there is interest. But the people who sit in the policy, planning and execution seat, we have a responsibility to constantly meet our people halfway.”

She said while it is difficult, inroads have been made.

“I can tell you about all of the inroads that were made during my time at TPAC and I can tell you about the inroads that are being made in Tobago Festivals, two very different organisations but with mandates that resemble and are shared in some ways.

“So there is interest and support from the younger generation, we just have to do our part to make sure that we can take it to the next level.”