The wind is rattling the windows and rain is dripping through the roof into buckets on the floor. We’re in a draughty mill near Preston city centre and it’s not easy to evoke the spirit of the Caribbean.
The riot of sequined costumes and feathered headdresses help though, as do the models of animals and the colourful outfits that fill almost every space.
A shimmering lion’s head, roughly six feet across, hangs from a ceiling-mounted pipe just inside the doors. To one side a tiger is suspended, mid-pounce, above shelf after shelf of sparkling material. A dragon lies on the floor beside racks of lurid clothing and a collection of enormous butterfly wings.
And if it seems crowded now, it’s only going to get busier as scores more bright and blingy pieces are added in the weeks leading up to Preston’s Caribbean Carnival.
The event is marking its 50th anniversary this year and organisers are planning to honour its founders and to recreate some of the costumes that featured in its early years.
The current chair of the carnival, Tracey Harris, remembers those early events – and how reluctant she was to be involved.
‘My parents were involved so I got dragged into it as a child, which I didn’t enjoy,’ she says. ‘My mum was in the first carnival and she took me or one of my siblings each year under duress.
‘I didn’t want to be there and I didn’t want to be dancing in the street. My dad used to take pictures and there’s a lot with me sulking and scowling. As we got older it changed and we’d have a laugh dancing and hanging out with our mates.’
And years later, she’s back. ‘In 2013 I watched the carnival and felt I’d like to help,’ she adds. ‘Although I have no secretarial skills, I was made secretary and then I became chair in 2016. They needed someone to take on the role temporarily until they found someone to do it full-time. I’m still here.’
Tracey’s parents and other Caribbean immigrants had watched the 1972 Preston Guild and been inspired to celebrate their heritage and to show their children who had been born in Preston – and the friends they’d made here – what went on back on the islands.
After the Guild, which has been held every 20 years since the 1540s, the Caribbean Carnival is now Preston’s second longest running cultural event and attracts thousands of people to the city.
‘My parents and the other people involved in that first carnival probably didn’t think it would last but although it’s had its ups and downs, we’re celebrating its 50th anniversary this year,’ Tracey says.
Many of those who helped organise that first festival will be a part of the event this year, as will some of the previous carnival queens.
Tracey’s parents left Dominica in the 1960s, just two of about half a million people who answered England’s appeal and left their homes across the Commonwealth in the 25 years after World War Two to help rebuild a nation devastated by the conflict.
Tracey, who works at Hutton Grammar School, is now one of a core team of four working on the carnival, although they are supported by a network of volunteers and work with artists who create some of the costumes. Inmates at Wymott Prison near Leyland have also been involved in sewing and adding bling to some of the outfits.
‘We have invested all our energies in making this carnival the best it can be – it's too big an occasion for us not to make it the best we can,’ Tracey says.
‘The carnival route was shortened last year but we don’t want to compromise this year – we want it to be a great big celebration. The focus will be on thanking the elders, we want to give them their day.
‘It’d be nice to celebrate our own history, so we have gone through a lot of the old photos and we are trying to re-create costumes that were used in those first carnivals.
‘One of the special projects for this year is a celebratory Caribbean Carnival gin, made by Wild Fox Distillery, with sorrel and lime imported from Caribbean islands.
‘We’re also running a garden project with Let’s Grow, the gardening group based in Ashton Park and we are hoping to have a carnival themed garden at Southport Flower Show.
‘We’ll have a curtain raiser on the Flag Market a week before the carnival, so we want as much as possible to be ready for then. There is a lot of stress in the week before the carnival – that's why we need the gin!’
Celebrations will be held across the late May Bank Holiday weekend but the focal point is always the colourful procession of floats, bands and dancers which will move through city from Moor Park to the Flag Market on the Sunday afternoon.
‘We’re supposed to set off at 12 noon,’ says Tracey. ‘But we tend to work on Caribbean time – if we’ve left before half past, I say we’re on time.
‘We’ll ask the elders to cut the ribbon to start the carnival and they will lead the procession on a bus. The streets are always busy, people always come out and support us, and then when it’s over, we’ll have a couple of days off and then we’ll start thinking about next year’s carnival.’
prestoncarnival.co.uk
* The Preston Caribbean Carnival are working with Lancashire Archives and historian Stephen Poleon to gather information and memories about 50 years of the carnival, with an exhibition in development for later this year. If you have photographs or stories to tell of your carnival experiences contact archives@lancashire.gov.uk.
