Leeds West Indian Carnival

The Leeds Carnival, also called the Leeds West Indian Carnival or the Chapeltown Carnival, is the longest running West Indian carnival in Europe, having been going since 1967. The carnival is held in the Chapeltown and Harehills parts of Leeds every August bank holiday weekend. 150,000 people were estimated to have attended the 2009 event.

It is a 3-day event, climaxing in a carnival procession on Bank Holiday Monday, which starts and finishes in Potternewton Park in Chapeltown. A parade of floats and dancers makes its way along Harehills Avenue, down Roundhay Road in Harehills, along Barrack Road and back along Chapeltown Road to the park, where a wide range of stages and stalls provide entertainment and refreshment for carnival-goers. Since 2005 this event has been covered by BBC Radio 1Xtra in conjunction with Notting Hill Carnival.

Read more about Leeds West Indian Carnival:  Carnival Queen and King, History, Gallery

Famous quotes containing the words west, indian and/or carnival:

    “Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
    —Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)

    “No contact with savage Indian tribes has ever daunted me more than the morning I spent with an old lady swathed in woolies who compared herself to a rotten herring encased in a block of ice.”
    —Claude Lévi-Strauss (b. 1908)

    “Looks like some carnival lost a good act.”
    —James Gleason (1886–1959)