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The Documentary: The Carnival: 50 Years in St Pauls

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Costume - St-Pauls Carnival, Bristol

24/11/2018 GMT

The Carnival: 50 Years in St Pauls

BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Carnival: 50 Years in St Pauls

Marking the 50th anniversary of Bristol’s cultural gem – the St Pauls Carnival

Marking the 50th anniversary of Bristol’s cultural gem – the St Pauls Carnival.

The St Pauls Carnival held in Bristol in south west England, was conceived as a celebration of Caribbean culture in the style of an English fair, as a way of uniting new migrant communities with their sceptical neighbours. But as time has worn on, the event has taken on a life of its own attracting hundreds of thousands of people and with it new challenges. In 2015, fed-up with internal bickering, the Arts Council pulled its funding for the event which led to the Carnival being cancelled every year since.

Narrated by Bristol’s first poet laureate Miles Chambers, from costumes to sound systems this tale looks at the history of the St Pauls Carnival, meets the family of four generations who all have a stake in it, and follows the new organisation grappling to appease a fractured community in order to put this year’s event on. Failure to do so “will spell the end of carnival forever.”

(Photo: Elaborate costume of a skull with wings worn in the annual St Pauls Carnival parade in Bristol. Credit: Loop Images/UIG/Getty Images)

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