Known as Europe’s biggest street party, The Notting Hill Carnival has a budget of £1 milllion and is an annual income-generating activity of considerable proportions. However, criticisms are flooding, saying the re-branded Carnival no longer affirms black identity and is merely a show for white urbanites and tourists. The upcoming Carnival is once more threatened to be an oversimplified, commodified, and stereotyped explosion of black cultural creativity.

Fueling this criticism, is the perspective that the Carnival’s leadership, in place for almost 10 years, has failed to create tangible benefits for the local black community. “The Grove” in Notting Hill is a major underdeveloped social area with the largest concentrations of blacks in wealthy Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea borough. The borough’s social and racial divisions are so obvious. The southern section is wealthy. Many other districts are well off by socio-economic standards and have few black households. But in the northern Notting Hill , Africans and Caribbeans are up to 20 per cent of the population. Residents suffer from poor housing, low incomes, unemployment, and racism. There is a perennial threat of gentrification and displacement by misguided public and private renewal.

Amidst this racial plague, the good news is that the Carnival company is not the lone beacon for local advancement. Socially responsible business initiatives now exist in Notting Hill. The emergence of government-funded area regeneration planners promise sweeping changes. Commercial developers including British Gas and British Rail as the forerunners, have undertaken projects as well. Sympathy extensions are also coming from partnerships of housing associations, voluntary, religious and charitable groups. They help black families and succour the imprisoned, ill and afflicted.

However, the Carnival must assume a special role: It must get creative with “people power”. People are the most important assets in any business. This is especially the case for the Carnival leadership at the heart of what is in effect a growing human resources industry. So in this upcoming Notting Hill Carnival, let us hope that preparations will imbibe the thrust to better the conditions of the African Caribbean people and the local community.

by Bidz dela Cruz