Whitstable August 3rd 2024
by
CJ Stone, Gerry Atkinson & Tim Cronin
By CJ Stone:
Above is a picture of me at this year’s carnival. I’m wearing a kilt, a top hat festooned with feathers, with a crown of seashells on the brim. Either side of me in the background you can spot Keith Brymer Jones of the Great Pottery Throwdown, and Julia Seath of the Labour Party. I didn’t notice either of them. I was too busy being fabulous!
This is what carnival does to you. I’m quite shy normally. Not on carnival day though. On that day I’m a star in my own firmament: an awesome creature born of the imagination, able to stop the traffic with a wave of my magic wand.
The feathers were made by Cathy Miles (ex of Seagulls and Flamingoes) and Clare Tindall (of tVC) and were assembled at a workshop in the Whitstable Labour Club. The crown was made by Christine McKenzie and given to me on the night of the fund raising auction organised by Julie Wassmer, the author. It was when Cathy was fixing the feathers to attach to my hat that I looked around at what else was going on in the room. It was a hive of activity, people making headdresses, hundreds of paper feathers in boxes, people designing outfits to fit in with this year’s theme, Fiesta by the Sea. There were three workshops altogether, two at the Labour Club and one at Revival on the High Street.
You see, that’s what carnival is about: community. People coming together, to make things, to do things, to put on fund raisers, to bless loaves, to assemble floats, to show off, to be loud and lovely and lively and free, to celebrate the life of this crazy little town of ours. To be spectacularly present in the moment and to have fun. In this world of doom, division and decay, the carnival is the exact opposite. It is the cure for all that. It is the magic spell that weaves the town together.
Memorable moments include the Farskate Foundation’s float, with a giant working puppet of a skateboarder doing flips and tricks. The Farskate lot also did the wonderful mural that was displayed outside the Coach and Horses near the Library Square. There was the Sound Crumpet sound system, put on by C.A.L.M., the Campaign Against Living Miserably. The music was Drum’n’Bass and Jungle but there was a pensioner in a cowboy hat sitting on a disabled scooter jiggling about to it, getting into the rhythm with all the young folk. Sam the Giant was there, and the inimitable Sadie Hennessy, with friend Dicky Stringer, on a tandem, being the creepy twins from The Shining. There was the Fish Heads from Total Pap: Justin and Emily’s first official outing since they got married a few weeks ago. And little Mila on the Surrey Carriage, Whitstable’s own very special Icon.
We’d like to say a big thank you to Tesco for providing fruit and water and for allowing us to display the children’s art in their community space; to the Reverend Simon Tillotson, who couldn’t attend as his wife had had an accident, but who blessed the Lammas loaf for us; to the Sea Scouts, the Steel Band and the Native Oysters Band for the music; to Pax Nindi for the commentary; to the Fire Brigade and the Kent School of Performing Arts; and to everyone else who sashayed, shuffled, shimmied and shook their way through the ecstatic streets in what was only the beginning of the town’s biggest party in a decade. It carried on, in a variety of venues, late into the night.
At the end, as I was I backtracking wearily along the route to get to my sister’s, I met a family – mum, dad and a couple of boys – making their way home. They caught sight of me, unmistakable in my costume. One of the boys raised his hand for a hi-five.
“Best. Carnival. Ever,” he said, carefully delineating each word.
To which I would add: and it will be even better next year.
Whitstable carnival is run entirely by volunteers. We need all the help we can get. If you appreciated this year’s event and would like to volunteer next year, please go to: https://whitstablecarnival.co.uk/contact-us
Film by Tim Cronin:
Photographs by Gerry Atkinson:
https://www.gerryatkinson.com/
Click on images to enlarge:
About Gerry Atkinson:
Training as a photojournalist, I started recording political protests in London in the 1990’s. I spent 18 months volunteering with CWERC, an NGO in the Philippines, recording the lives of indigenous women for an audio-visual ‘Weaving our own Dreams’. I moved on to New Zealand for 4 years working for newspapers. On returning to London I organised a collaborative project with people with mental health problems to produce ‘Through the Lens’ documentary photography exhibition.
My MA research in 2010 resulted in a book ‘Shades of Other Lives’, a series of windows at night, developed in reference to Labour Party comments that “We are all middle class now”. In 2011-2012, I spent 10 months in Greece, Cape Town and New Zealand working on documentary projects. Recent community projects are ‘Our Work of Art 2018-2019’. I have an NUJ Photojournalist Press Card and am currently discussing new ideas and collaborations.
I studied at Leicester University, the London College of Communication and the University for the Creative Arts.
I have extensive solo and group exhibition experience including the British Museums landmark exhibition “Rice and Life in the Philippines”. My work has been published in newspapers, books and magazines and is held in private collections.
Photo by Glen London
To see more of Gerry’s work, please go to: https://www.gerryatkinson.com/
About CJ Stone
CJ Stone is an author, columnist and feature writer. He has written seven books, and columns and articles for many newspapers and magazines.
Read more of CJ Stone’s work here, here and here.
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