40 Years Of Derby Carnival

This documentary celebrates the 40th year of the Derby Carnival, an annual arts, culture and recreational project/event planned and organised by the Derby West Indian Community Association. The Derby Caribbean Carnival has been going for many years and in fact started out as a small festival in 1975 being held at Moorways Sports Centre where members of the community came together to organise various activities in order to raise funds. Although the carnival is organised by the DWICA, we work collaboratively with other organisations and interested parties to programme and deliver the event.

It was not until 1986 when more emphasis and resources were put into the carnival and they employed a worker for Caribbean Focus 1986. From here on in the carnival became a much bigger venture, attracting much more interest not just from the East Midlands region but nationally.

Originally the carnival was held over one day on a Saturday but in 1998 we tried a new approach whereby the carnival was held over two days with the procession taking place on the Saturday and events, such as stage show with internationally acclaimed artists, fun fair, beer tent, sound systems, arts and craft stalls, food stalls (selling Caribbean as well as European foods) being held on Osmaston Park on the Sunday. This proved to be very successful and since then the carnival has been held over a two day period.

Over the years most of the funding has been provided by the organisation itself but we have been fortunate in the past to also have received funding from Arts Council (East Midlands), in kind support from Derby City Council, although more recently we have received infra-structure cost from the Derby City Council. We have been sponsored by Derbyshire Building Society, Rolls Royce, Western Union and Midland Mainline to name just a few.

During the carnival period it can attract as many as 150 volunteers to help in areas such as the organising of the carnival, carnival workshops, carnival queen show, marshalling duties both on the procession day and on carnival day as well as doing other duties.
The carnival costume workshops provide an opportunity for the professional facilitators to pass on the skills of costume making to both young and old, in order that they can then start to take over the running of the costume workshops.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International