After the Notting Hill and Nottingham riots of 1958, which came after a series of racist attacks on Black communities, Trinidadian-born journalist and activist Claudia Jones responded by putting on a series of cultural events that would later be recognised as a precursor to Notting Hill Carnival. Jones said that she wanted the celebrations, held in St Pancras Town Hall, to “wash the taste of Notting Hill and Nottingham out of our mouths”. Famously, the slogan for this first carnival was: “a people’s art is the genesis of their freedom”.
Because we often use art to find moments of joy and escape from the drudgery of everyday life, there is a temptation to see art as something that transcends politics. But this couldn’t be further from the truth. As Jones observed, it is precisely art’s capacity for joy that makes it inherently political; the choice to keep surviving, laughing, creating and partying in the face of oppression. For me, much of art’s political significance also lies in its ability to record our subjective realities across time. While no one is guaranteed a widespread audience for their work, almost anyone can create art or engage in culture. For Caribbean people, whose histories have been systematically erased over hundreds of years of enslavement and colonialism, this has offered a small opportunity to document our own histories from below, so that our parents’ and grandparents’ stories do not go to the grave with them.
