Notting Hill Carnival Strategic Review - Intelligent Space

ecause the plight of minority ethnic communities in Britain continues to place them
disproportionately at risk of exclusion and disadvantage. Communities of people of Caribbean
descent are more likely to be unemployed, suffer ill health, live in deprived or unpopular
neighbourhoods and have their children disproportionately excluded from school. At the same
time, these communities continue to be the target for racial harassment and racist crime, which is
widespread and under-reported 37 .
Documenting the History of Carnival - A Case Study
1.34 The Review Group came across a number of positive community-based initiatives designed to
document and record the history of the Notting Hill Carnival. The work of the Kensington &
Chelsea Community History Group is an example of what is currently being done to preserve and
record Carnival’s past (see below). In our opinion, the Notting Hill Carnival Trust has a central
role to play in supporting, co-ordinating and initiating strategies for the effective collection,
preservation and dissemination of the history of Carnival so as to encourage a greater awareness
and respect for the event, particularly amongst young people.
Case Study 1
Notting Hill Carnival Oral History Project
Sue McAlpine, Oral History Coordinator of the Kensington & Chelsea Community History Group
and Eric Huntley have so far recorded just over fifty interviews with people who, over the years,
have been the makers and shakers of Carnival. The project is still continuing.
“This is the story of Carnival from the inside. From the Carnival makers themselves you can hear
of the hopes, disappointments and the sheer joy of making mas’. For many reasons it is vital that
these memories are collected before they are lost and forgotten: to preserve the history of
Carnival, to pay homage to the pioneers who were instrumental in taking it from its tentative
beginnings and brought it to the international festival it has become today. Two recorded
comments were the inspiration for this oral collection. The first was from Michael La Rose who
commented that ‘Carnival is about survival and resistance - we have to trace and record, for
future generations of black and white people the stories of those carnival pioneers, now in their
sixties and seventies, who established a festival in Britain under extreme opposition but yet have
survived, and not only have survived but flourished.’ The second came from Wilf Walker who
stated: ‘There are lots of people who have made profound contribution to carnival but no one
ever talks about them, no one ever brings them in, no one seeks out their opinion. . . if we can’t
identify those people who made this happen and big ‘em up and hail them for what they did, then
God Almighty what can you do? . . . how are we going to grow this thing?’
These are memories from early calypsonians and soca singers, of steel pan players, of leaders of
bands, of sound system men – stories of running electrical cables under the Westway to plug into
a friend’s power source on the other side. There are memories from the local churches, from
residents, from people who cooked for Carnival, people who crewed St John ambulances, and
people who cleared up afterwards. Of course there are memories of the riots of the seventies
both from people who found themselves caught up in them and from members of the police
force themselves. There are the voices of people who talk passionately about the spirit of
Carnival, what it means personally to them and their fears and anxieties about its future. The
North Kensington Community Archive was set up to collect the oral history of this area of
London, in particular from its ethnic groups. It is still in the process of being developed and
established. The oral history of the Notting Hill Carnival will shortly be accessible and available
for people as a resource and will be published in book form.”
37
“Minority Ethnic Issues in Social Exclusion and Neighbourhood Renewal: A Guide to the Work of the Social Exclusion Unit
and the Policy Action Teams so Far”, Cabinet Office, 2000
41