Carnival Crossroads Eastbound

Main banner at the front of the parade

Front of the Luton section

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Front of Ipswich Section

The carnival itself, in Luton! on 8 July 2012

Some links to the other artists involved in designing costumes for the parade: 

 Carnival Crossroads Eastbound Artists

It's been both very exciting and a great priveledge to work with so many wonderful designers on this project.

Carnival crossroads Eastbound

On the print table

Attaching the banners to the poles

The Cambridge banners - at rehearsel

Cambridge rehearsel

One of the Ipswich banners being tested in my garden - the illustration comes directly from Julie Carpenter's lovely sketch for her giant puppet

And on the day - banners assembled and stacked against the wall waiting to be allocated to the carriers.

Here are some pictures taken in the run up to the Big Day

Carnival Crossroads Eastbound

Cary's brilliant illustrations and cutouts for the Luton banners

and his football cutout

You can see both these designs realised in the banners above.

Cary's illustration for banner which depicted the twin themes of Luton as the carnival city and a city of diverse people

So, this is the banner- it went out in a tour round town, the evening before the event to publicise the carnival

It was a huge job and I couldn't have done without my team - Aiden, who did endless cutting out and some printing,  and Cary who did lots of brilliant illustrations for the banners and was my fellow printer when the banners got too big to do on my own.  Not to mention Dan who came to stay in the middle of  the final push to complete the banners. Despite suffering great domestic discomfort, he played the accompagniment to the hum of my sewing machine on his trombone.  Why don't we have a picture of that?

Carnival Crossroads Eastbound

I've been so busy this summer that I haven't had a chance to blog ...............so finally I am starting to look through my photos and try to place them in some kind of order.  I'll be posting some of these over the next few weeks as I sort through them.

One of the big projects I've been working on is Carnival Crossroads - Eastbound.  The carnival which took place in Luton in July this year and our section had 500 people- 100 from each of the eastern cities of Cambridge, Luton, Southend, Norwich and Ipswich.  Each city had it's own designers and themes which were inspired by the city itself.  My job was to create a title banner and a series of banners which served as chapter headings for each section, which described the city, it's various themes and which united the whole parade with a single identity- Eastbound. 

This banner was made at the Mas Camp in Norwich with the help of Jankie and a lovely art student whose name I don't remember