Notting Hill Carnival
The Notting Hill Carnival is an open-air event lasting several days, held annually on the last weekend in August in Notting Hill , London . The Carnival attracts up to two million participants and onlookers, making it one of the largest mass events in Europe. The high participation of African and Caribbean immigrants is characteristic.
The Carnival always begins on a Saturday with the Panorama , a competition between London steel bands , as the highlight, on Sundays the J'ouvert and a parade of children and young people take place, and finally on Monday - always on August Bank Holiday, a British public holiday the main parade took place. Their route stretches for five kilometers through the main streets of Notting Hill. In addition to trucks with steel bands or mobile sound systems, costumed groups and over forty stages and systems on the event site ensure the atmosphere with high volume.
The carnival was initiated by political activist Claudia Jones in January 1959 and took place as a party at St. Pancras Town Hall . It was a protest against massive racist attacks on immigrants in the previous year (Notting Hill Riots) and a racially motivated murder of a young immigrant the following spring. The right to human dignity and equality should be demonstrated through culture. The motto was: “A people's art is the genesis of their freedom” (The art of a people is the beginning of their freedom).
The event was a great success and was repeated in ever larger halls over the next few years. After a children's party with Russ Henderson in August 1965 , members of the London Free School, in coordination with the organizers of the Claudia Jones Carnival, moved the Notting Hill Carnival to August as a festival in the streets of the district. Members of the original event also attended. In the early years, however, there were hardly more than 1,000 participants.
In the years that followed, the Carnival took on a distinctly Caribbean color. In the mid-1970s, 150,000 people took part. In 1976 riots broke out as sections of the youth population let their frustration against the police run free - a reaction to the harassment they encountered in everyday life. The protests and riots were repeated, if to a lesser extent, in the following years, so that a ban on the event was discussed in the media. At this time, Prince Charles was one of the few personalities who nevertheless endorsed and supported the event.
Movie
- Don Letts - Carnival! (2009)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Telegraph.co.uk: Notting Hill Carnival 2019: dates, times and parade route for the London street party. Retrieved August 30, 2019 .
- ↑ Detlef Diederichsen A load of the Caribbean , mare No. 136 p. 71