“The Carnival of Culture is a celebration of all that’s good and distinctive about Lancaster and a protest against the corporate takeover of our city by Centros Miller and other developers, against the wishes of the community.
From Centros Miller, the Northern Link road and out-of-town supermarket plans at Lawson’s bridge, Lancaster is subject to a barrage of proposed developments designed to benefit large companies, yet threaten the fabric and liveliness of our communities. We are tired of the lack of any say for the residents of the city as to the direction that the planners are taking us.
The Carnival is about giving Centros, the Council and any other developers a taste of the strength of our communities and of our opposition. It’s also about making links and creating lots of exciting and fun events!”
Taken fron website.…
Saturday 1st of March saw Lancaster’s Carnival of Culture come off without a hitch. During the day, between 250–350 people joinedin a fantastically colourful, creative and vibrant street procession that snaked around the town through the afternoon, stopping in spots that are due to be blighted by car-parks, big box retail shopping and so forth, as well as the town square with it’s Trumpton-style Victoria statue, the City hall and the planners’ offices. We were treated to performances by a community steel band, Batala samba (leading the procession for much of the day), SistaSlap women’s african drumming group, an impromptu klezmer group, a skateboarding 10-foot Punch puppet, an alien on stilts etc etc etc.
The procession also took up the City’s one-way system in between events, with a bike sound-system providing the bassy beats. Stewards for the carnival on bikes blocked side streets and on foot, handed lollipops to car drivers caught up in the blockage. The police, it has to be said, facilitated the whole thing in a low-key manner, except for the unnecessary presence of 3 undercover cops and evidence gathering team. Why don’t they just use our website for pictures!? 😉
The protest/procession was organised over several months at open, public meetings run by consensus, and at ‘infrastructure group’ meetings (also open), with tasks divided into working groups for e.g. music, performance, carnivalism…The event itself was proceded by a street performance where corporate ‘grey men’ pulled the maggot of consumerism through saturday shoppers, sucking the souls from ‘unsuspecting’ ‘random’ Lancastrian shoppers, who were offered empty shiney bags and emerged with zombie-mask blank faces.
It is impossible to convey the ‘vibrancy’ and ‘diversity’ (we wanted to reclaim these corporate-propaganda words from the developers) of the day, it’s best to visit the website at www.carnivalofculture.org.uk. We have sent a loud and colourful, well-organised and diverse, unambiguous ‘NO’ to the corporate take-over of our city, and a multi-faceted ‘YES’ to the alternatives of non-commercial community and creativity.
carnivalofculture at googlemail dot com
http://www.carnivalofculture.org.uk