St Pauls’- The evolution of one of Bristol’s most vibrant celebrations

By Emily Brewster, Third-Year History

St. Paul’s Carnival is an iconic celebration of African and Caribbean culture in Bristol and the oldest of its kind in Britain, predating London’s Notting Hill Carnival (now the nation’s biggest). St Paul’s is just a ten-minute walk from the city’s centre and has, at times, been unfairly associated with social unrest and crime. This however is an outdated and problematic view that does not consider St Paul’s thriving cultural diversity and impressive community-led activism.

 This view does not also consider St Paul’s contributing to Bristolian culture as part of sum total, and not as separate to Bristol.

 The St. Paul’s Festival, first put together in 1968 by a Caribbean community-group has sought to change this racialised stereotype of the area and unify ethnic communities across the city.

One of Bristol’s first suburbs, historically housing middle-class industrialists, St. Paul’s suffered extensive bombing damage during the Second World War and movement of the population away from nearer the central city as Bristol expanded in the years that followed. This opened cheap housing opportunities for Caribbean migrants, predominantly from the Jamaican working-class emigrating to Bristol, in post-war Britain. The area has since provided an accepting space for migrants arriving in Bristol looking for affordable housing and a strong community for many who continued living there.

The increasing racialisation of housing, education and employment opportunities in Bristol and St. Paul’s erupted in riot in 1980 as a response to the Thatcherite discriminatory policing of ethnic minorities. 

Wanting to defy the growing association of West Indians with ‘deviant behaviour’, a small group of local activists gathered in 1968. This group included two veterans of the Bristol Bus Boycott which had triumphed in ending the colour bar of the Bristol Omnibus Company in 1963.

The group decided to organise a celebration of Caribbean food, dance and culture for all ethnic communities across Bristol to challenge the negative stereotypes associated with the area. Around 3000 people attended, including schools and local families, many selling their West Indian cooking from their doorsteps. Despite the pouring rain, a parade, cricket games and toy-making workshops were set up for neighbourhood children.

Hackett, an organiser of the original festival recalls in this interview how as the years went on, the celebration doubled in popularity annually, eventually becoming the ‘St. Paul’s Carnival’ in 1991 that we still know today. 

Though the event has grown bigger and more inclusive over the past half-century, there has been concern over the commercialisation of the once community-led celebration. Originally designed for local families of St Pauls and Bristolians to enjoy Caribbean culture, the loss of some external funding contributions have destabilised the Carnival in the past decade. 

Instead of sharing and selling Caribbean cuisine on their home’s doorsteps, local people started to be charged hundreds of pounds to rent a stall on the street. However, the incredible expansion of the event has, a Jamaican chef in Bristol says, created a vibrant multi-culturalism that honour’s the original intentions of its creators, and a space where people of any ethnicity can feel safe and valued.

 Following the Carnival’s absence in Bristol from 2015-2017 due to financial difficulties, the event was revived for the 50th anniversary in 2018, in beautiful colour and brilliance. Unfortunately, the advent of COVID-19 disrupted the celebration again in 2020, leaving the city restless for 4 years until finally, St. Paul’s Carnival returned bigger, friendlier, and safer than ever, attracting over 100,000 people to join in the festivities in July 2023.

So, what is the future for St. Paul’s Carnival? Sadly, the extortionate costs and organisation of putting on an event on this scale after four years of pandemic-related disruption has prompted the Carnival’s organisers to continue the celebration on a bi-annual basis, rather than yearly as it had been before 2015.

The iconic Bristolian event will next be held in July 2025, a day that all of us in the city wait for with great excitement.