Ideas for Carnival Events
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THIS IDEA was suggested at the meeting, Oct. 21, and it was generally agreed that it was a great idea: A photo competition – nice shots of Lancaster with a prize for the best shots – in collaboration with for instance The Folly, who could exhibit the shots for a while.
I’m going to try to write this instead of saying it. The way I see this being an entirely successful idea, not only in adding some necessary weight to opposing the unsavoury plans in the offing all over town, but also as a way of bringing people together who wouldn’t normally [key words] share the same oxygen is by bringing together diverse cultural activities and practitioners under the same umbrella/roof/remit.
I’d say one of the reasons the last event was so successful was primarily because we managed to assemble a pretty diverse group of musicians from multiple musical and social backgrounds, who in turn brought in a diverse audience. When this was coupled with all the work Ellie and everyone did up on campus and round town we ended up with a fairly unusual (for Lancaster) combination of people. There were a large number of long-standing generally non-political (in the activist sense) characters there, reasonably ‘old’ people I’ve know for a good while, local musicians, stragglers and lots of students. How often does this happen? The only failure of the night as far as I’m concerned was that we didn’t really have a programme to present (in the sense of someone to say “we want to keep life vibrant in this town and we don’t like the centros miller plan”) to what was essentially a captive audience when the band finished. That was a woefully missed opportunity really, and I hold myself responsible mostly seeing as I was standing next to a microphone.
The gist of what I’m getting at here is that if we can continue to put on events that will not only appeal to but also bring in a broad social cross-section of the town then we are in a much better position to get a ‘message’ across. To do this the events need to be diverse, they need to be reaching into and coming out of diverse groups in the town. It’s no good having nights that come entirely out of our own group (us who are here right now I mean) because then only we will go. However if we can have nights that involve as many others as possible, and in particular get diverse groups to think about simple collaborative efforts (as we did last time where the classical, irish trad, klezmer and punk worlds managed to collide successfully) then it can only be for the better. More people will come. More people might listen to the loosely political message that people want to put out. More people might get involved. More people might think “hmmmmm …. “
Hi Peeps!
Ideas for carnival events?
Be warned that I missed the meeting about this so maybe many of these ideas are not relevant or have already been suggested/rejected by others…
>A day of music in the streets with all the local bands we can find, leading to the recording of a “Lancaster City of Culture” compilation CD that will be sold in support of the Carnival
>A photo exhibition, both “real” and virtual, with prizes for the winners – and make sure it’s advertised in the Citizen and other local newspapers and has an atractive prize to encourage lots of interest
>To involve and encourage groups at Uni such as Chinese, Afro-Caribbean or Latin-American student societies to put something on in town rather than in uni – and therefore make links with the town population
>Some documentary filmmaking about life in Lancaster – be it the market, skateboarders or posh alternative types – that could be displayed online and in fixed spaces such as the Folly/Uni/Greggy
>A Lancaster/Lancashire food and drink day to celebrate local culinary and alcoholic pleasures
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Off to play tennis like the best anarchists
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There will be a street performance in February!
Look out for maggots and zombified shoppers!
A post shall appear on the blog soon re. volunteers etc.
at the meeting someone suddenly remembered that they know someone with a giant maggot puppet thing….you couldn’t make it up! only in lancaster… and i think that is what we are celebrating!!! ;-P
Indian dance workshop, please
At Lancaster we have already Salsa classess (GREAT!!) as they are very popular but we dont have Indian dance classes. Having so many Indian descendents around is a sorprise for me.
It goes with the idea tufty talked about above: >To involve and encourage groups at Uni such as Chinese, Afro-Caribbean or Latin-American
I would certainly include Indian, Indian-Brittish etc
Thanks for all of you who are preparing this! I hope to be able to join you.