What is really happening to St Paul’s Carnival?

In November 2015, in a room overlooking the Temple Circus roundabout, five members of the St Paul’s Afrikan Caribbean Carnival Ltd were pulled in front of city leaders including then-mayor George Ferguson and representatives from Arts Council England.

It was here at the council’s temporary home that they learned their fate and the fate of St Paul’s Carnival in its current form: the local authority was pulling its support, suspending the £140,000 needed to run one of largest one-day street party of its kind in Europe.

They were told – in no uncertain terms – that drawing the annual funding while failing to put on an event four times in ten years was unacceptable. They had broken the most basic conditions of the contract, leaving the streets of St Paul’s uncommonly quiet on the first Saturday of July too many times.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the failure to put on the event over the summer of 2015, due to “event management” concerns. The carnival had at first been postponed and later cancelled – causing a storm of public criticism.

A few days later, a handful of familiar faces were in the same council offices facing a similar row of city leaders. Leading members of the St Paul’s community were being tasked with forming a group of interested people to help resurrect the beleaguered event. The Carnival Commission was born.

Ten months, 18 meetings, three consultations, two surveys, £10,000 of council money and one report later, the commission announced at a public meeting in July that St Paul’s Carnival should return next year in a “minimal form” in order to put in the groundwork for the crucial fiftieth anniversary in 2018.

Agreements had been reached and ideas had been formed for making the carnival sustainable – including suggestions of early curfews and clubs not street corners hosting sound systems late into the night.

The path was set and the commission would disband on September 1. A new organisation would then be formed to take back the city council and Arts Council funding, which had been ring-fenced.

That is the plan, at least.

The harsh reality is that attempts to revitalise and relaunch the carnival ahead of its half-century anniversary in 2018 have also exposed deep divisions.

At the public meeting, where the recommendations were published, the new commission were accused of attempting to “hijack” a community event by one of the members of St Paul’s Afrikan Caribbean Carnival Ltd, George Francis.

The committee for St Paul’s Afrikan Caribbean Carnival Ltd, which is a registered charity, later announced on Facebook that they were now seeking legal advice to protect the St Paul’s Carnival brand from being used by anyone else.

They have also set up a crowdfunding website to try and raise the cash to put on the fiftieth anniversary carnival in two years’ time.

Two of five committee members, Colin Watson and Andrew Samuels, agreed to an interview with Bristol24/7 where they denied that mismanagement had led to a withdrawal of funding last year – instead blaming the city council for effectively running the event into the ground.

Watson and Samuels argue that the carnival has been running on the same council grant for the last 20 years, in which time the number of party-goers flocking to the event has doubled to about 100,000 people.

“We’ve spoken to the council about the increases and they’ve said they can’t afford to do it. Alright, that’s understandable; if they say that’s all the money they’ve got, that’s understandable.

“But what we’ve also seen is an increase in our costs. With more people coming, the council put more costs on us; £20,000 cleaning up, £20,000 to the police.”

The pair added: “From 2010 we saw this coming. We explained we were getting 100,000 people, we need more police, we need more funds.

“The only thing more we got was more costs. Are you trying to price us out of our own carnival? Is that what they’re trying to do? That is the question.”

These are questions which have been raised repeatedly as the frustrations have been bubbling away. The committee even took to Facebook last year to add a theory of racism at the council.

One source close to the new commission, who did not want to be named, told Bristol24/7 that such remarks amounted to “conspiracy theories” not uncommon in recent, more challenging times for the carnival.

The city council has been clear from the start that conditions were broken when the carnival was cancelled.

A source added that the council have gone to “great lengths” to hold onto the funding to make sure the annual event returns. They added that “nobody owns carnival”; it is a “community-led celebration”.

Julz Davis, a member of the new commission and chairman of Carnival Network South covering events from Plymouth and Bristol to Notting Hill and Milton Keynes, says funding problems, cancellations and tensions between organisers in Bristol is far from a unique story.

He warns of a perfect storm of shrinking council budgets and bad media coverage hitting funding or sponsorship for carnivals up and down the country.

“It’s no surprise people are asking why they should continue to invest in an event which doesn’t happen or happens on and off, and has health and safety issues,” Davis told Bristol24/7.

“Because we know the headlines about the carnival aren’t the best.”

“When councils have got old people to look after, hospitals, school dinners to pay for, they are going to ask ‘why should we invest?” the Ujima Radio DJ added.

Davis, who quit as artistic director at the carnival in 2012 over a row about scaling down the event, supports a reformed and streamlined carnival organisation to rekindle the event. 

“We are really up against it so we need to have our business case fit for purpose,” he said.

Among the recommendations the commission has put forward are to consider scaling back the carnival, expanding its footprint, moving the evening sound systems to club venues and bringing in an early curfew similar to what already happens at Notting Hill.

Some argue that it is a case of taking St Paul’s Carnival back to its roots. In 1968 the carnival started as a celebration of multiculturalism, eventually incorporating more traditional elements of Caribbean carnivals.

By the early naughties the event had turned into a 100,000-people street party with sound systems running into the early morning on residential streets, dominated by sensationalist headlines about stabbings, drink and drugs. The carnival had become a victim of its own success.

In response to the recommendations, members of the St Paul’s Afrikan Caribbean Carnival Ltd told Bristol24/7: “Any one of those sentiments is viable; we’ve already said this.

“These concerns and ideas are not new to us, that is why when we looked on the report, we started to think, ‘what was the sense of the commission, when you could have got the ideas for free?’”

They also added that they were concerned about the “commercialisation” of the carnival and the ultimate loss of its identity.

Whatever happens next, Davis says that Bristol cannot afford to follow the examples of troubled events around the UK: “This year alone there were several issues with Reading and Luton, who had their funding withdrawn, and various other big events like Birmingham which is more on than off.

“Even Notting Hill Carnival has major issues too.”

He adds that the commission he speaks for says the only way to prevent this is to create a new, fit-for-purpose board which can monetise the event, reducing its dependency on falling council budgets.

“St Paul’s Carnival is the perfect example. It’s the biggest one-day street carnival of its kind in the South West, if not Europe, but only £7,000 is generated in income from the public”, Davis says.

“There’s a myriad of issues here and we’ve tried to take some time out to look at how we can refresh, revitalise, restore and take the best, learn from others and make sure we don’t repeat mistakes; and relaunch a fit-for-purpose carnival for another 50 years.”

The new vehicle which will take the carnival forward needs to be set up by October, according to the commission’s own report.

The current St Paul’s Afrikan Caribbean Carnival committee now has the choice to accept the report, disband and move aside, or stand firm on their own – opening up the possibility of rival carnival brands.

The future and direction of the carnival will depend on how the next few months pan out in terms of creating a fully representative new body to run the event.

Davis added: “In the last 10 years it hasn’t happened four times which is almost half and that’s just not good enough.

“Everyone accepts that we want a carnival and everyone want it to return to our streets every year as a celebration of cultural celebration.”

Bristol24/7 asked the Carnival Commission to respond directly to claim they were “hijacking” the carnival.

A spokeswoman said: “Following the disappointing cancellation of St Paul’s Carnival for the second year in a row, our sole reason for forming was to save our much loved Carnival.

“It is our ambition to ensure that it remains an annual celebration of African Caribbean culture on the streets of St Paul’s.

“With the loss of confidence from the core funders, the funding streams which are vital to putting on a spectacular street-based Carnival were in jeopardy. So over the past 11 months as a volunteer-based and grass-roots led group we have worked to secure the confidence of these organisations.

“In addition, at every stage of this transparent and open process we have reached out to the current management team by arranging meetings to discuss our thinking, inviting them to all consultation events and shared reports in advance of publishing them.

“We have invited representatives to sit on the recruitment panel for the research consultants.

“With a focus on securing a sustainable future for St Paul’s Carnival we the Carnival Commission are keen to work with all like-minded people and bodies.

“Importantly we value both the expertise and experience of the current organisers.

“Our report and its recommendations has put forward a set of solutions co-created with the community to help the Carnival meet its current challenges and enable us to ensure that it returns in 2017 and beyond.”

You can read the full report here.

Read more: ‘It’s time to take Carnival back to basics’