Newport Carnival, Community Development (Nicky Brittan b.1956)

Description

Nicky remembers Newport Carnival. It used to start outside Community House.

Nicky has been connected to Community House for 56 years. He was born in Eton Road. He attended Sunday School in the old Church when he was 4 years old and continued going until he was 14. Brian Selby’s mother was one of the Sunday School teachers. When he reached 15 or 16 years of age, he started working at Community House in the coffee bar and later at events before the building was re-furbished in the 1990s. He is still an active member of Community House today.

This extract is about Nicky's memories of Newport Carnival during the 1970s. It was a big thing at that time. A trailer lorry would be dropped off on a Thursday evening outside Community House. They would spend all Friday decorating it with stuff that they had been preparing in all the youth clubs for weeks. Nicky was responsible for this at one time, but Brian had started it. They had the help of people from the art college, art teachers etc. to help with the design and the building.

“We built things mostly out of cardboard, scraps of string and wool.”

Newport carnival has always gone on, he thinks for about a hundred years.

“We would meet up at the Docks. There would be about one hundred and fifty to two hundred floats. There would be a procession through town to and end up in Shaftsbury Park.”