I also learned a version of how Notting Hill carnival moved from an indoor event, timed with Trinidad carnival in January, to become a street festival on the august bank holiday.
It seems that, separately to the West Indian Gazette’s carnival, a group led by a White woman, re-started Notting Hill Fair, one of those 800 year old summer events that the Victorians closed down. One year, the organisers of that invited Claudia Jones’s carnival to provide a steel pan band for one of the floats. And from there the two merged, with the Caribbean part eclipsing the hippy folk revivalists, and the rest is not very well documented history.
#carnival #nottinghill #claudiajones #blackhistory #blackhistoryuk
