40 Years of Notting Hill Carnival
Over thirty years I've been going to Notting Hill Carnival. First as a photographer, second as a pannist. Now I'm one of the, they say, top designers for the Carnival.
There's this picture here, which was the first time I've been to carnival. It was about in '74. It was the first steel band I saw coming down Notting Hill. At that time the main procession was going up and down Portobello Road. They were called Ebony Steel Band.
The following year I joined them and started to play pan. It was exciting, it was great. I thought gosh this is nice just gave me a sense of freedom really to know this is going on in London.
I like everyone coming together, just for those two days and enjoying themselves. And when you put a costume like that on you can be anybody you want and that's the beauty of it.
This is a costume I wore in 2002. It's quite a magnificent costume and I'm really chuffed that it's in the V& A because I've always loved coming here since I was very little. To see it here and to see this is what I wore is just kind of amazing really!
I don't make costumes as such, I produce carnival art. This is carnival art. As you can see it's over four metres tall and over 3 metres wide. It's mounted on a frame with wheels and just wheeled through the street.
It's all hand painted, but people would have thought it's airbrushed because I've developed this technique of painting in a way that it looks like it's been airbrushed.
From the age of 17 we were hooked and we've been doing it every year. This costume sort of relates to us because this year we had a white costume so it's quite similar. It had lots of feathers, lots of beads and stuff.
And we like to put on make up, in the morning getting ready with our friend who does it with us, putting on make up, putting on glitter. You know, glitter every where and just getting warmed up and ready to go.
