Antigua and Barbuda’s Department of Culture, operating under the Ministry of Creative Industries, has announced a specialized training workshop for Soca and Calypso competition adjudicators, scheduled for Saturday, June 20, 2026. The event will take place on the campus of the Antigua and Barbuda College of Advanced Studies at the Harrison Centre, marking a key step in the department’s long-running mission to bolster the professionalism, integrity and public trust in the country’s iconic Carnival judging processes.
Running from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the scheduled date, the workshop will welcome both sitting adjudicators who oversee the island nation’s most high-profile Carnival contests—including the widely popular Soca Monarch, Party Monarch and Calypso Monarch competitions—and emerging candidates hoping to join judging panels in future events. Over the course of the day, participants will build practical skills in core judging competencies, ranging from standardized scoring methodologies and consistent rubric application to nuanced performance analysis and proactive implicit bias awareness.
Leading the training will be Kimdale Mackellar, an experienced cultural practitioner and adjudication specialist with deep expertise in Caribbean performance arts. Mackellar will guide attendees through a deep dive into the key assessment criteria that shape competition outcomes, covering everything from lyrical depth and musical composition to originality of work, stage presence, audience connection, thematic communication and overall performance quality.
Unlike traditional passive training formats, the workshop will center on interactive, hands-on learning to help participants put new skills into practice immediately. Scheduled activities include small-group discussions on common judging challenges, supervised mock adjudication exercises, cross-adjudicator calibration sessions, audio and video analysis of past performances, side-by-side score comparison activities, and one-on-one guided feedback sessions to address individual growth areas.
As Carnival continues to grow in cultural significance and draw increasing public and tourism attention across the Caribbean, the Department of Culture has emphasized that consistent, transparent judging is more critical than ever. The department notes that the workshop is rooted in a core priority: ensuring every person sitting on a competition judging panel has a complete, up-to-date mastery of official judging criteria, and can apply those standards fairly, uniformly and transparently across all performances.
Through capacity-building initiatives like this specialized training, the Department of Culture is working to systematically strengthen the institutional frameworks that underpin Carnival competitions, with the goal of ensuring all artistic achievements are evaluated consistently, objectively and to the highest professional standards.
Individuals interested in participating in the workshop or seeking additional logistical details are invited to contact the Department of Culture directly by phone at 562-9606 for more information.