Mas in the Six

The Master Builders Behind Big Mas

By Twylan Best

Toronto Carnival has always been more than a parade of colour and sound, it is a living archive of Caribbean imagination, resilience, and storytelling. Each year, thousands of masqueraders step onto the road in feathers, beadwork, wireframes, and sequins, but behind every towering costume is a quieter world of hands, hours, and heart.

For its second season in The Caribbean Camera, Mas in the Six, continues its journey of documenting Toronto’s Carnival through a deeper cultural lens. This year, the focus shifts from band leaders and broad creative direction to the people who quite literally build the spectacle: the designers, builders, and artisans of big mas.

Big mas has always carried a particular weight in Carnival culture, physically, emotionally, and symbolically. These are the larger-than-life costumes that transform the road into mythology: soaring birds, ancestral figures, fantasy creatures, political satire, and Caribbean folklore brought to scale. They are not simply worn, they are constructed, engineered, balanced, and carried. Often weighing tens of kilograms and requiring months of planning, big mas demands a level of dedication that sits at the intersection of art and endurance.

In mas camps across the city, long before the first soca truck hits the road, builders are already deep in the process. Wire frames are shaped and reshaped. Feathers are layered, reinforced, and tested for movement. Beading is done piece by piece, sometimes late into the night after work hours, school runs, and everyday life has already taken its share of energy. It is labour that rarely gets seen in full—but is always felt when the costume rises on Carnival day.

This season, Mas in the Six turns its lens toward those makers.

There is something deeply intentional about that shift. If band launches tell us the theme of Carnival, then the builders tell us the truth of Carnival – that it is not only designed in boardrooms or conceptualized on mood boards, but physically brought into existence by community, collaboration, and craft. Every finished costume carries the fingerprints of multiple people, even when only one masquerader is seen on the road.

By centering the builders of big mas, this year’s feature aims to open space for a different kind of recognition that honours process over presentation. These are the individuals who translate ideas into structure, who solve engineering problems with creativity, and who ensure that each piece can survive the wind, the heat, the movement, and the long journey down the road.

As Carnival continues to evolve in Toronto, so too does the conversation around what deserves visibility. While frontline costumes often take the spotlight, Masinthesix is intentionally widening the frame to include the hands behind the spectacle, the ones shaping the scale, spirit, and storytelling of mas itself.

Each Carnival season will continue to explore a different layer of this culture. Where Season One highlighted band leaders and vision, Season Two moves into construction and craft. And in seasons ahead, the intention remains the same: to document Carnival not as a single moment, but as an ecosystem of people, labour, and legacy.

Because big mas has never just been about what we see on the road, it is about everything it takes to get there.

Stayed tuned for the first release in next week’s edition of The Caribbean Camera.

For interviews, media inquiries, or event coverage with The Caribbean Camera, contact Twylan Best at twylan@thecaribbeancamera.com.

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