Ansel Wong CBE and three leading practitioners debate Carnival’s next 60 years. With live calypso.
We call it a street party. Ansel Wong CBE says we have it wrong.
Sixty years of Carnival. Fifteen thousand costumes. Thirty million sequins. Most of it made for one weekend on the road. So what comes next – and who decides?
Ansel Wong CBE – six decades at the centre of Black British cultural life – convenes an open discussion on the future of Carnival as an art form, joined by three practitioners who each carry a different piece of the answer:
Kris Parker – Notting Hill’s foremost practitioner in recycling and sustainability in mas
Symone Williams – award-winning costume designer and social entrepreneur from the Genesis Mas Band family, and former Carnival Specialist with Arts Council England
Anthea Hudson – Assistant Director of Notting Hill Carnival Ltd and Carnival Village Trust, part of the senior leadership team delivering one of the world’s largest cultural festivals
Together they will ask what comes next for Carnival at 60, drawing on each panellist’s own position within Carnival, the challenges they have managed and the future they see for the event and its creative practices.
How do we make mas sustainable when so much of it is single-use? What does clean energy on the road look like, from the costumes to the sound trucks? Who carries the craft forward – the wire-benders, the pan-tuners, the arrangers? Where does the work get made as mas camps and rehearsal spaces disappear? And how does Carnival stay community-owned and central to British culture, not pushed to the margins?
Expect strong opinions and straight talk, woven through with live calypso and spoken word – the music and poetry that have always carried Carnival’s message. Come with a view.
