Mr. Stephen Derek

Mr

Stephen Derek was born in 1952, at Buller Street in Woodblock not far from George Bailey’s Mas Camp. For a boy with a passion for mas, there was no better place in the world to be as he was able to learn to draw and design mas from the legendary George Bailey.

 

After his mentor’s death in 1970, Stephen Derek got deeply involved in carnival and his first breakthrough in the mas scenario came in 1972, when he designed and produced costumes for Alvin Bailey’s band Tales in Verse. From then onwards Steve (as he is familiarly known) became involved in the mas making process, wirebending, aluminum, leather, cane, fibreglass skills, moulding, carving to such a high degree that he can now be termed as “the complete masman ” having fully mastered all aspects of costume building and design.

 

In 1978 he produced his first carnival band ‘D Midas Touch ‘ which placed second in the Band of The Year Medium Category and continued to produce masterpiece after masterpiece year after year winning the Band of the Year Medium for thirteen consecutive years . His adult individual portrayals have won Queen of Carnival and Individual of the year on many occasions. His junior carnival portrayals have won the Junior King and Queen of carnival and Individual of the year also.

He exports the carnival worldwide by designing and producing bands and costumes for Trinistyle Carnivals throughout the Caribbean, St. Thomas, St Marten, Guyana, Canada, Boston, Atlanta, New York, Houston, Miami , England and South Africa to name a few. He has become a year round Masman moving from one carnival to another show casing his creative genius and technique for the world to see and admire.

His creative works over the years have received accolades, tributes and awards from carnival organisations worldwide, but his most memorable is his Humming Bird Medal Silver which he received for his outstanding contribution to the Carnival Artform in the Sphere of Mas in 1992.