Massive fun-lovers gathered in the streets of West London for the grand finale of the Notting Hill Carnival, one of Europe’s biggest street parties.
The carnival which kicked off unofficially on Saturday with the UK National Panorama Steelband Competition, officially on Sunday with the Children Parade is an over two-day event dedicated to the celebrations of Caribbean music and culture.
Since 1966, the Notting Hill Carnival has been a yearly Caribbean Carnival spectacle held on the streets of the Notting Hill neighborhood in Kensington, London each August, specifically the Sunday before the August bank holiday and the holiday Monday itself.
The roots of the carnival can be traced back to 1958 when a Trinidadian human rights activist, Claudia Jones, took the initiative to bring people together in response to racist attacks on Black individuals in the Notting Hill neighborhood.
However, the Notting Hill Carnival started in 1964 with a handful of Trinidadian steel bands and has evolved into a massive yearly street celebration. It features vibrant floats, numerous calypso dancers adorned in stunning feathered outfits, nearly 20 steel bands, and over 24 sound systems.
The carnival made a lively comeback to the narrow streets of West London last year having been held online for the past two years due to the challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic.
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This year’s celebrations coincide with the observance of the 75th anniversary of the Empire Windrush’s arrival in England.
The Empire Windrush was a vessel that brought numerous individuals from the Caribbean to start new chapters of their lives in Britain. This journey came to represent the significant post-war mass migration that reshaped the United Kingdom and its cultural landscape.
However, the path hasn’t been smooth all along, and this became evident when certain individuals from the Windrush generation got entangled in a U.K. immigration crackdown.
Unfortunately, this crackdown wrongly affected individuals who were lawful residents, many of whom hailed from the Caribbean and other regions of the former British Empire.
