The New Carnival Company (NCC) recently received a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant of £54,000 for an exciting new project.
‘A Rather Bewildering Spectacle’ will focus on the Island’s rich carnival heritage, which spans from 1887 to the present day, and has never previously been well-documented. The unusual title stems from how local papers described the first Island Carnival, held in Ryde in 1888. This project has been made possible by money raised by National Lottery players, and the work carried out will be at the heart of next year’s Mardi Gras theme, A Story of Carnival.
NCC will be working with Carisbrooke Castle Museum, who hold carnival memorabilia in their collections, and InspirEd who will help to capture and record memories of Isle of Wight carnival through reminiscence and oral history activities led by school children and adult volunteers.
The project aims to engage young people to learn about the Islands carnival traditions, and discover new stories which will be saved for posterity. Selected stories will be reimagined and presented at 2020’s Mardi Gras parade, and a bespoke Island Carnival Memories website and documentary will also be created. Community reminiscence sessions will also allow local residents to share personal memorabilia and bring their stories to life.
Frankie Goldspink, creative director at NCC says:
“The real stories are held in old family photo albums and memories of elders who can reflect on past carnivals with unique insight. We want to capture local resident’s memories of carnival and so we would love to hear from anyone involved with legends such as the Keystone Cops or Ryde Buccaneers. Hanna Nixon, the granddaughter of James White, also known as Skimbo, a well-loved carnival figure in Ventnor, has already been in touch with some fascinating stories.”
The 2020 Mardi Gras theme, A Story of Carnival will cover carnival beginnings in ancient Egypt to modern day extravaganzas and include a section on IW carnival tradition. Anyone interested in being involved in next year’s Mardi Gras is welcome to attend the launch on Thursday 21st November at 18:00 in Ryde Academy theatre.
When Ryde had a hospital, some of the procession used to go through the children’s ward to show those children too ill to get up and watch, as it passed in front then.
All the large holiday camps used to put in fantastic floats, usually filled with attractive women.
Ryde carnival was led by Annie ‘someone’ who rode a large white horse.
Girls were proud to be carnival queens and teens were not too up themselves to dress up and have fun.
Key stone cops were great and would kidnap someone from the crowd and throw them in the back of their van and let them out streets away. Now low life would sue for damages.
Ryde Bucaneers were great and a little scary when you were young.
People used to throw pennies, the large old ones, onto the floats of those they liked best.
Oakfield I think Valvona’s scrap yard always put in a great float, with women exposing flesh, and stockings and scratchy music, always fun and loud and drunken.
Now a sorry state compared, but at least people are trying.
Sad to say that the Notting hill type dancers really added life to the carnival when they came, but, glad they all went back again and hopefully never left to many buggy fulls behind.
Last year never saw the ‘odd’ couple of some old women dressed in skin tight latex and a hubby who clearly enjoys all the attention she gets. It has got so bad, I even missed them.
After the Lord Mayor’s show, commeth the dung cart.
True you don’t know what you got, until it has gone.