Notting Hill Carnival

The Notting Hill Carnival is an annual Caribbean Carnival event that has taken place in London since 1966 on the streets of the Notting Hill area of Kensington, over the August Bank Holiday weekend.

It is led by members of the British Caribbean community, and attracts around two million people annually, making it one of the world's largest street festivals, the largest in Europe, and a significant event in British African Caribbean and British Indo-Caribbean culture. In 2006, the UK public voted the Notting Hill Carnival onto a list of icons of England.

Carnival traditionally commences on the Saturday with Panorama, a competition between steelpan bands. Sunday is designated family and children's day, with a shorter parade route for young people. The main adult parade takes place on Monday. Notting Hill Carnival represents the "five disciplines of carnival": masquerade, calypso, soca, steelpan, and sound systems.

The origin of Notting Hill Carnival can be traced to a number of roots.

A "Caribbean Carnival" was held on 30 January 1959 in St Pancras Town Hall as a response to the problematic state of race relations at the time; the UK's first widespread racial attacks, the Notting Hill race riots in which 108 people were charged, had occurred the previous year. This was organised by the Trinidadian journalist and activist Claudia Jones, often described as "the mother of the Notting Hill Carnival" in her capacity as editor of influential black newspaper The West Indian Gazette, and directed by Edric Connor. It showcased elements of a Caribbean carnival in a cabaret style. It featured the Mighty Terror singing the calypso "Carnival at St Pancras", The Southlanders, Cleo Laine, the Trinidad All Stars and Hi–fi steel bands dance troupe, finishing with a Caribbean Carnival Queen beauty contest and a Grand Finale Jump-Up by West Indians who attended the event.

The first outside event in Notting Hill was in August 1966, a hippie London Free School-inspired festival organised by Rhaune Laslett, who was not aware of the indoor events when she first raised the idea. This festival was a more diverse Notting Hill event to promote cultural unity. A street party for neighbourhood children turned into a carnival procession when Russell Henderson's steel band (who had played at the earlier Claudia Jones events) went on a walkabout. By 1970 "the Notting Hill Carnival consisted of 2 music bands, the Russell Henderson Combo and Selwyn Baptiste's Notting Hill Adventure Playground Steelband and 500 dancing spectators."

Leslie "Teacher" Palmer, who was director from 1973 to 1975, is credited with "getting sponsorship, recruiting more steel bands, reggae groups and sound systems, introducing generators and extending the route." He encouraged traditional masquerade, and for the first time in 1973 costume bands and steel bands from the various islands took part in the street parade, alongside the introduction of stationary sound systems, as distinct from those on moving floats, which, as Alex Pascall has explained, "created the bridge between the two cultures of carnival, reggae and calypso." "Notting Hill Carnival became a major festival in 1975 when it was organised by a young teacher, Leslie Palmer." The carnival was also popularised by live radio broadcasts by Pascall on his daily Black Londoners programme for BBC Radio London.

Sam King is described in tributes as a co-founder and early organiser of the Notting Hill Carnival, having helped establish a Caribbean street festival in 1964 that later developed into the modern carnival. In addition to his role in the carnival’s early years, King was a prominent community activist of the Windrush generation and later became the first Black mayor of Southwark.