For the rest of the article click HERE.For a £7.5m building, the new arts centre in Luton has been a tip for the last week, littered with wire, fabric, artificial flowers, foam rubber and braid, with patterns being cut out on every level surface.
Today, out of the chaos, dragons and demons, huge masks and oriental maidens in cherry blossom, and a giant white woman with scenes of heaven and hell and an ancient milk float hidden under her skirts, erupted on to the streets of Luton, Bedfordshire, as the country's first dedicated permanent centre for carnival arts formally opened for business.
"Madness, that's what carnival should be," Paul Anderson, director of the centre said. "Safe madness," he added quickly, since his centre will not only house and train dancers, drummers, and the geniuses who can make a 6 metre (20ft) goddess out of foam rubber and sequins, but is also training people as carnival security officers and stewards. The cost of policing the Luton carnival has risen to £68,000.
Carnival in Britain has become a multi-million pound industry, evolving from back lane amateurs, to professional teams working year round for a few raucous hours. One recent survey suggested the Notting Hill carnival generates more than £90m a year for London and the equivalent of 3,000 jobs. The centre, and the town's carnival, are predicted to generate more than £34m in Luton over the next decade. Funding for the centre came from the Arts Council, the local authority and university, and the EU. Luton has the largest one day carnival in the UK, more than 2,000 in the parade and 150,000 spectators. It grew out of the Hat Parade, a long tradition in a town once famous internationally for its hat making industry. "Hats, cars, now it's carnival", Anderson said...................
I am pretty impressed by the Luton Carnival Centre and how focused they are on making their Carnival into a legitimate standardized business with trained professionals, I mean they are even training the SECURITY officers that will be working for Carnival!
Hopefully one day the NCBA (National Carnival Bands Association) will fullfill it's dream of having something similar in Trinidad, in the meantime they had better send a team over to Luton to see how it is being done!
PHOTO SOURCE:
www.guardian.co.uk
Hopefully one day the NCBA (National Carnival Bands Association) will fullfill it's dream of having something similar in Trinidad, in the meantime they had better send a team over to Luton to see how it is being done!
PHOTO SOURCE:
www.guardian.co.uk
5 comments:
my friend contracts for them!
oh that's great! they had the carnival centre in the mall, they would have steelpan(original trinis playing it) and booths with historic aspects of carnival and all kinds of information. If my memory serves correct they even had a few costumes on display! It was great!! I am glad
the mall is, the mall in Luton by the way, had the privilege of being there 3 years ago
Mimi, are you talking about Luton carnival (which happens at the end of May each year) or the new Luton Carnival Centre (which is not a centre for Luton carnival, it is a carnival centre based in Luton, if you get what I mean)?
And do you mean The Mall Arndale in Luton? I think they have little displays for special occasions.
I haven't been to Luton carnival in years as it clashes with Reading carnival, but sometime I would love to visit this centre, although many Notting Hill carnival mas bands also do similar activities, especially the community based ones which run workshops for kids and things.
Yes i am talkin about the arnedale. I caught the jist of it being a carnival centre based in luton. When i visited luton it was in august so It's not luton carnival. It was just there in the arnedale they had some kind of exhibition with carnival and real steelpan because i think nottinghill was that weekend and they had done it for that
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