History
The carnival started in 1967 as a multi-cultural event, St Pauls Festival, which was aimed at bringing together the European, African-Caribbean and Asian communities living in the area. The initial organisers were the St Pauls and Environs Consultative Committee and the West Indian Development Association, aided by the vicar of St Agnes Church and Carmen Beckford, Bristol's first community development worker.
Researcher Thomas Fielding said that the first event had an "extravagant multiculturalism which juxtaposed steel bands, Scottish dancers and a weight lifting competition."
Trinidadian Francis Salanday became organiser in 1975 and under his leadership, the festival incorporated more elements of traditional Caribbean carnival, such as the Mas parade and sound systems. In 1991 the event was renamed St Pauls Afrikan-Caribbean Carnival, but it retains "an inclusive ethos and still attracts a wide range of Bristolian celebrants."
The festival ran every year until 2002, when it was cancelled. Amirah Cole, of the organising committee said: "We've worked hard to get funding for carnival projects and events, but it has been much more difficult to get support for training and extra staff." "The fact the carnival happens each year is down to the hard work of a few association members who give their time freely throughout the year to plan and fund-raise" "Carnival has grown so much that this is no longer sustainable."
In 2006 the carnival was not held as the organising committee took a year out to re-structure and develop plans for a festival in 2007 which would be part of the commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act 1807.
Carnival returned in 2007 improving its diversity and popularity, with a reported 70,000 people attending in 2008.
Read more about this topic: St Pauls Carnival
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)