St. Paul's Carnival Update

Bristol’s annual celebration of African and Caribbean culture, St Pauls Carnival, returned this summer to the city’s streets under the theme of Learning from Legends. In light of this year’s event St Pauls Carnival’s Executive Direc tor LaToyah McAllister-Jones joined us to offer some more insight about the event.

How do you feel about the carnival after the pandemic?

The team was thrilled to return to the streets of St Pauls to celebrate the 55th carnival event this summer following a fouryear hiatus due to the pandemic. This year’s event was set to be a big one, celebrating the lives and contributions so many people have made to Carnival.

Since it began, St Pauls Carnival has played a central and active role in challenging the status quo and this year’s celebration was an important one for us all to acknowledge the challenges those who have gone before us have faced in blazing a trail to ensure African Caribbean culture is preserved and celebrated.

How did you keep the community alive?

Although for many they saw this year’s event as a return, as an organisation we have maintained community celebrations, albeit on a smaller scale over the last four years. Our education programme aims to spread the traditions of Carnival all year round. From Mas Camps with costume making to Black History Month outreach, assemblies, and steel pan drumming lessons, we bring the spirit of Carnival to schools and the community, 365 days a year.

Can you tell us more about this years carnival?

This year was the first full St Pauls Carnival for our chair Levi Roots, who was appointed in 2021. I couldn't wait to have Levi in the heart of Carnival as chairman during the event, he was really excited about seeing Carnival back in full technicolour on the streets of Bristol and seeing the carnival come to life under the Learning from Legends theme to mark such an historic year in so many ways.

This year the carnival event featured four stages showcasing iconic and fresh new creative talent from Bristol to capture the Carnival vibes. The Roy Hackett Memorial Stage was this year’s main stage located on St Pauls Learning Centre Green, celebrating the legacy of Bristol activist, community elder and civil rights pioneer Dr Roy Hackett MBE. This stage featured many of Bristol's greats spanning across genres such as Reggae, Dub, Hip Hop, Spoken Word, Afrobeats, UK Funky, and more. The Radical Roots stage is our newest stage and was found in Brunswick Square. This new stage welcomed a blend of activist-led cultural arts featuring some of Bristol's best artists performing music, spoken word, dance and more.

How did you involve the community in this new version of the carnival?

In the lead-up to this year’s Carnival event, we have launched a series of fringe events celebrating the community, achievements, and the Caribbean legends of our past, present and future as we build up to our comeback Carnival. To mark the 75th anniversary of HMT Empire Windrush arriving in Britain on 22 June 1948, we launched our traditional fringe event series starting with a Legends of Windrush: Human Library event. Using this year’s Carnival theme ‘Learning from Legends’, event guest speakers reflected on the many trailblazers from the Caribbean community and how they’ve impacted our lives.

Following tradition, each Carnival day begun with a private elder’s brunch in which the community elders were invited to gather and enjoy delicious Caribbean cuisine. This year we are thrilled to host our community elders once again. We also orchestrated a community mas camp pilot, a 10-week programme embedded into the community. The programme was aimed at encouraging the development of costume-making skills, giving the wider community a chance to be a part of the procession. The St Pauls Dance Troupe was also heavily involved. The project is in its second year and debuted at last year’s Back A Yard community events programme.

The dance troupe, co-ordinated by Afidance and Sheba Monseratt, was seen in the procession and will hopefully become a regular fixture at carnivals all over the country.

How do you embrace the young people who have never visited the carnival before?

As mentioned earlier our education programme seeks to spread the traditions of Carnival all year round. As part of this, our team worked with many local schools that have performed this year as part of the iconic event percussion. Many of these young children have never attended the Carnival before and this year was their very first taste of the Carnival. It is important that we preserve the Carnival legacy with our future legends.

What projects are coming up after the carnival?

As a team we work all year round, as much as the St Pauls Carnival is such an iconic summer event, we are Carnival 365 days of the year. Following the Carnival event, our education programme and community engagement will continue as we share and celebrate African Caribbean arts and culture. This vital work brings our community together; we inspire, teach, and engage with the history and heritage of Carnival. Future projects include a year-round programme of fundraising events in collaboration with local artists and venues.