The New Carnival Company’s annual Mardi Gras parade will return to the streets of ryde on Saturday 9th July after 2 years of absence due to the pandemic.
The 2022 launch event, held at Quay Arts on 25th January, was attended by over 50 people, including councillors, teachers, artists, and community volunteers, all keen to find out more about this year’s theme – Our World Our Future.
The New Carnival Company (NCC) outlined its artistic vision for the parade and explained how the different topics in the theme were suggested by children and young people themselves.
Hannah Ray, learning manager of the NCC explained:
“For the first time, we invited young people to write the storyboard for the parade. We talked to them about issues and problems affecting the world and they had a surprisingly good grasp of the ‘sustainable development’ concept. We looked at the UNESCO Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS) and prioritising the goals and realised how interdependent they are. They gave us lots of ideas for positive action and this parade will demonstrate that optimism and determination”
Our World Our Future will have 20 sections, falling into four categories – People, the Planet, Places and Peace. There will be carnival costumes and presentations on the road representing topics such as ‘End Global Warming’ and ‘Reduce Waste’, we want ‘Clean Energy’ and ‘Freedom and Justice’. Hannah explained how each school and group taking part will also make an active pledge to do something together to leave a positive legacy – like planting trees, or walking to school, or giving to food banks.
The NCC itself is making a pledge to remove all petrol and diesel vehicles from its parade and to introduce new ways of creating sound, both live and recorded. There will be a much greater focus on costume presentation and choreography, with New Carnival Company offering an extensive programme of supporting workshops and dedicated resources online.
Highlights of the evening were 2 musical presentations on the theme, performed by Wroxall Primary School children and students from IW College Performing Arts. They sang calypsos they had written earlier in a workshop delivered by Alexander D Great from London, one of the country’s leading carnival music experts.
Alexander explained about creating song for the parade and spoke about National Children Carnival Week, 9th to 15th July, of which the Mardi Gras at Ryde is part of the national opening celebrations.
Councillor Debbie Andre, Cabinet Member for Children’s Services, Education and Skills, attended the event. She said:
“Mardi Gras is a fabulous activity that engages our island children and young people in a creative way through Carnival, and that both supports and enriches the educational offer on the island. It is fully inclusive and gives a voice to those groups who may not otherwise have the opportunity to fully express themselves, such as those with physical challenges and the neuro-diverse. The themes this year, chosen to represent the 17 UN sustainable development goals, will showcase our ambition, as a Biosphere Reserve, to encourage our young people to lead the way to a sustainable future for our island. I would strongly encourage everyone to get involved in “Our World, Our Future” and I would add “Our Young People, Our Future”.
Mardi gras is 47 days before Easter unless you live in Ryde when it is 83 days after Easter. I can only assume that the next Christmas day in Ryde is March 18th 2023
But Mardi Gras is before Easter, like 1 March 2022. So, why so late here?
Can’t we have a simple, straightforward carnival where people just go along and enjoy themselves with music and dance without having to be preached to and made to worry about ‘issues’ and ’causes’?
There’s enough doom and gloom in the world already and something like a carnival should be a joyful experience and not a time used to educate people about issues such as global warming, waste, energy etc.
There’s a time and place for these causes but surely people should be able to go out and enjoy a carnival for an hour or so without being made to feel guilty or have a ‘message’ pushed at them? Please, just let us have fun.
I want to go and see a carnival, not kids being exploited to further blinkered “woke” politics.
Gary liniker is looking old.