NOTTING HILL CARNIVAL
To mark the anniversary, the NHC team developed a series of partnerships and helped create satellite events including the Steel Scenes festival at the Southbank Centre that not only celebrated Carnival’ s birthday but also 75 years of steel band in the UK.
Multimedia venue complex Outernet London marked the anniversary by displaying photographs from Ian Watts’ archive of Notting Hill Carnival in an installation using Outernet’ s vast wraparound screens at The Now Building. It featured images spanning Watts’ documentation of Carnival from the 1970s to the present day.
Remarkable figures
While one of the latest reports suggests NHC generates around £ 400m to the local economy, in order to get firm figures the event’ s organisers are currently involved in an ongoing study that is being overseen by Mariana Mazzucato, an economics professor at University College London.“ There have been a lot of numbers thrown out there in terms of Carnival’ s economic impact, but we are six months into a two-year project to define it.
Financially, I know Carnival definitely puts back in a lot more than it receives in terms of funding but for me that’ s not the big win. I think what we often fail to discuss is the social and wellbeing impact that Carnival has on communities.” In March, The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan announced an additional £ 4.66 million in funding to support this year’ s NHC, added to the £ 946,300 already committed by City Hall. The Mayor said the funding was
“ WHAT WE OFTEN FAIL TO DISCUSS IS THE SOCIAL AND WELLBEING IMPACT THAT CARNIVAL HAS ON COMMUNITIES.”
intended to help Carnival’ s organisers implement enhanced safety and crowd management measures.
While NHC’ s CEO says the additional funding was welcome, it was used to cover the additional responsibilities of taking over road closures and infrastructure management which had previously been handled by the Metropolitan Police. It meant the NHC team taking on the role of overseeing barriers and infrastructure for an area covering around eight square miles.
“ We had less than half of that level of funding last year, but we handled a lot more in-house this year,” says Phillip.“ It was a big challenge for us this year because we took on so much more. One of the big pieces was all of the road closures because it’ s a massive piece and there’ s a lot of moving parts around closing off so many roads but also being able to facilitate access for residents. In the end it worked really well.”
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