A MOSSLEY arts organisation will bring the spirit of Carnival to one of the north’s best-loved music festivals next month.
International Carnival specialist Global Grooves has been tasked with producing the grand finale at Kendal Calling: a super-sized, celebratory parade, featuring over 220 community performers of all ages.
The local creative organisation, which is based at The Vale arts centre, will join a line up that includes Paolo Nutini, Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds and The Streets, as well as Keane and Sugababes. Global Grooves’ larger-than-life procession will take place on the Sunday of the festival, which runs from 1-4 August in the Lake District.
Young Global Grooves producer Freya Bennett-Nielsen, 23, travelled the length and breadth of Lancashire and Cumbria on a mission to find musicians and dancers with ‘big Carnival energy’.
In the end, seven groups made the cut, with participants aged from 6-85. They are Baybeat Street Band from Morecambe, Boom Dang from Barrow, Blast Furnace Street Band from Ulverston, Eden Dance and BJamba from Penrith and Kendal Dance Academy and Drum Nation from Kendal.
Global Grooves’ celebratory pageant for Kendal Calling is inspired by this year’s festival theme, ‘the high seas’. In the spirit of all things swashbuckling, the parade will be made up of three main sections, and led by a nautical Carnival queen, majestically riding the waves in her horse-drawn cart.
Lavishly costumed dancers, giant walkabout puppets and scores of flag bearers will complete the procession, which is influenced by Carnival traditions around the world.
Festival goers will be able to interact with puppets Sea Spirit, Cyclone the goat ghost from the Cumbrian coast and The Spirit of Courage, a seafaring Carnival queen, sporting a show-stopping headdress, based on a mariner’s astrolabe and trailing a 5m hand painted silk ship’s sail.
Best known for its work on the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Pageant and Bluedot Festival, Global Grooves has inspired people all over the globe to take part in Carnival-style events since 2003, working across the UK as well as in Gambia, Brazil, New Zealand, Singapore, and Trinidad & Tobago. In 2021, it launched the Northern Carnival Centre of Excellence within The Vale arts centre, which is situated off Micklehurst Road in Mossley.
Freya said: “Global Grooves specialises in bringing together diverse community groups to create professional level Carnival experiences.
“We know that our Festival partner organisations are going to bring bags of big Carnival energy to help us deliver an unforgettable high seas finale for Kendal Calling.
“And it goes without saying that creating Carnival is about so much more than the final performance. When local people get together and collaborate through the arts, they grow and form connections that can reap rewards for years to come.”
Therese Johnston, director, partner organisation Boom Dang, said: “Our members have been asking me for years to get a gig at Kendal Calling.
“But I just never knew anyone that could open that door for us until Global Grooves came along. Everyone is super excited.”
Cathryn Peach-Barnes, creative director, Kendal Calling, said: “This is the largest Carnival that Kendal Calling will have staged with more artists and community members than ever before.
“We’re so excited to be a platform for such excellent talent in Cumbria and Lancashire, coordinated by phenomenal long-term collaborators Global Grooves.”