Moko Somõkõw launches its 2019 presentation ‘The Palace of the Peacock,’ alongside an event by Vulgar Fraction, Granderson Lab, Erthig Road, Belmont, February 14, 2019. Photo by Shaun Rambaran, used with permission. Editor's note: This story was written by artist, costume designer and Moko Jumbie Alan Vaughan. It describes his experience working at a collaborative art and performance space that had recently opened in Belmont, a district close to Trinidad's capital known for having produced many cultural giants. Housed in a former printery, Granderson Lab is now the home of Alice Yard and The Cloth/Propaganda Space, and has become a centre of creativity and community activity, hosting discussions, fashion, art and stilt-walking events, even a community library. Vaughan, who had come from his base in Newcastle, U.K., first designed a band in 2013 from Trinidad's southern city of San Fernando. That first year in Port of Spain, 2015, he was given a small, downstairs area at Propaganda Space to use. For each subsequent Carnival until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, he has worked on the bands as an artist-in-residence at Alice Yard, upstairs. Vaughan and the community of Moko Jumbies that come together in various configurations every Carnival to work and perform, have produced several winners in Trinidad’s traditional masquerade competition, including a King in the Africa category and two Queens of Carnival, individual and mini-band winners and for overall costume design. “Mr Alan” himself is the current Champion Moko Jumbie, having won in 2020, the last pre-pandemic Carnival. Alan Vaughan, working on costumes for the band Moko Somõkõw. Photo by Sforzamedia, used with permission. Belmont, early morning, the refuse truck passes, mens’ voices call, diesel fumes. The street cleaners go by, brushing, swish, swish, the debris of last night’s scavenging dogs and hungry street dwellers. Esú is at the entrance, red and black at repose draped over the partition to the interior, his crown of banana, cowrie and calabash resting inside just beyond the step. Jonadiah is still at the opposite end of the island in South, sleeping in one of the concrete houses built in rows over the cane fields of Ste. Madeleine. As dusk approaches, when the street is tired and radiating the day’s heat, he will arrive and weave some more fresh stripped fig; and as darkness falls, he will inhabit the mantel and rise twenty feet into the sodium-lit air amongst the current wires and telegraph poles. Passing traffic will slow, headlamps glaring, and pedestrians will watch; and some will stop and take photographs. First sunlight threads through the back of the old printworks. An invocation drifts across the neighbourhood. Ella Andall is calling as people open doors, bathe, and children search for book bags. The first cars come in ones and twos, the vanguard of an incoming tide, and the early-start office and shop workers from the narrow lanes walk by in crisp shirts and perfume on their way to the day’s commerce. A rat scurries under a cupboard, to sleep in a dark place. Granderson Lab serves as the base of operations for the 2018 efforts of Moko Somõkõw: The Magnificent Return of Sunjata, February 13, 2018. Photo by Shaun Rambaran, used with permission. Littered, stacked, and tumbled, the Moko Jumbie space is chaos. The Virgin Queen’s crown of cowries rests against the cheap plastic sewing machine, whose overlock thread is held by wire taped to an empty Stag. Her six-foot collar of gold emergency foil leans against a rack where Baron Samedi and Maman Brigitte have left their clothes, waiting for more embellishment of chicken feet, shells, and artificial flowers. Its underside of blue organza will become, when finished and carried on stage, the salty water of Yemanja’s Atlantic. A car tyre and a hacksaw, a bag of nails to shoe the sticks, tins of Evo-Stik exude their fumes through battered lids (they never close, once opened), and extension trip wires tangle around chairs and over trestles cluttered with fabric and scraps, scribbled notes and dirty masking tape. The street enters this liminal place at will through the scissors gate, but eyes must peer more closely into the interior, darkened by the exterior glare, and people, assuming the padlocks are locked, must call before; with a screech and clatter, a gap is pulled wide enough for them to come inside, if the oil-stained mechanic is not mending a car on the kerb, and lets them know the secret. Upstairs, the tailor works, cutting and sewing soft fabrics to fit curvy women, who come in the evenings on their way home, to purchase their bespoke Sunday best or Carnival glamour.