Mayor of Worcester Blog

Changing Face of Worcester Carnival

The Worcester Carnival stretches back at least a hundred years. The carnival was for many years the highlight of the city’s calendar until it came to an end in the 1990s. I know those carnivals are warmly remembered by many. Who can forget the Ronkswood Girl’s ‘Bouzouki’ Band?

After several attempts to resurrect the carnival, the current team finally oversaw a successful return in 2017, and I’m pleased to see it grow every year since.  Despite a hiatus in 2020 and 2021 due to COVID, the last two year’s events have seen thousands of residents and visitors turn out to make the most successful carnivals yet.

At the official opening last Saturday, it was an honour as Mayor to thank the organisers – they do a massive amount of work that often goes unseen.

Worcester Carnival has been changing. It’s great to see the thought and values that the organisers have applied to the planning of this modernised event. They’ve embraced inclusion by ensuring the carnival involves the breadth of Worcester community and I’m pleased to see a much bigger environmental theme by including lots of walking, dancing and cycling into the carnival.

It’s also great to see the traditional role of “Carnival Monarch” being developed. Gone is the outdated 1970s style beauty Queen. Instead, we now have two people chosen. They chose for themselves between being the Carnival Ambassador, the Queen or Carnival King. Rhianna Levi and Danny Taylor-Edwards will be this year’s Carnival Queen and King for the coming year promoting good causes.

The team behind the Worcester Carnival are pioneers in creating a platform for diverse community voices. In a herculean feat of cooperation, they created three hand-propelled vehicles that were constructed for the Carnival by 101 Creation Space, decorated by Spare Room Arts, working with The Monday Night Club, the Worcester Afro-Caribbean Association and Honeywell Primary School.

Thank you to the organisers, everyone doing the stalls and everyone taking part in the parade – you were amazing!

 

The Mayor gets invited to all sorts of things. I get to go to so many interesting events and meet such fascinating people. Too many to list and I don’t want to give just a rundown of everything in my diary, so here’s just a couple of things from my week.

I recently attended a new member’s Rotary Lunch. The Rotary club was founded in Chicago USA in 1905 by Paul Harris. Rotary International is a worldwide organisation of business and professional people. Rotary’s motto is ‘Service Above Self’. Its lofty mission is to provide service in the community, in the workplace, and throughout the world to build goodwill and peace, provide humanitarian service, and to encourage high ethical standards in all vocations. They are famous for their work in raising money for the goal of eradicating polio. Here in Worcester, they raise money for various charities but the thing that caught my eye was not the money raised but something perhaps even more valuable, the time they give to their youth work.

Members of the Rotary Club of Worcester have for many years been patiently going into schools to spend time just listening to children read. This is a big deal, not every child has a parent that will spend time listening to their child reading. This is levelling up in action. Great work, but the Rotary Club have taken this much, much further by creating opportunities for primary school children to take that scary step of speaking in public with their Junior Youth Speaks competition.

Year Six children are asked to either read a poem or write and then deliver a short speech. This week I had the pleasure of being part of the judging panel at Hollymount School. I’m in awe of these eleven-year-old children speaking so confidently with a microphone in front of the whole school. As a shy child I can’t imagine doing that. What an opportunity to grow confidence – public speaking is an amazing life skill. Thank you Emma Train, Head of English at Hollymount School, and thank you to Sheila Sonley, Rotary Club Youth Lead, for all the fantastic work you do.

 

 

Being Mayor of Worcester has given me fantastic opportunities to go to many events that I wouldn’t normally attend – such as a Saturday morning rehearsal of WODYS Carousel with 54 children and a production team.

WODYS – Worcester Operatic and Dramatic Society Youth Section – is putting on the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical at Worcester’s Swan Theatre from Tuesday 1 August  to Saturday 5 August  – and after watching the rehearsal I am really looking forward to going to the show.

The youngsters, aged 8 to 18, performed with such confidence and I really enjoyed listening to songs such as If I Loved You and June is Bustin’ Out All Over, sung so well by the soloists and chorus.

It takes something special to get up on every Saturday morning and put so much into a rehearsal like that. I was very impressed.

The arts are something special and it is very important to support live theatre and music. I hope the performances will be well attended and a good amount of money raised at the raffles for Grace Kelly Childhood Cancer Trust.

WODYS has won five Best Youth Production awards from NODA (National Operatic and Dramatic Association) for shows including Les Miserables (School Edition) and Shrek, the musical the group did last year, and the youngsters are hoping Carousel might be nominated for another similar accolade.

Carousel is one of the great musicals and tells the story of the love affair between Billy Bigelow, a smooth-talking carousel barker, and Julie Jordan, a young mill worker.

I was strongly impressed by the acting and how the youngsters work so well together and everyone is so friendly and keen.

I am really looking forward to seeing Carousel. But here is the sting. The arts are suffering. Attendance numbers for many concerts and shows are down due to the cost of living crisis. But also there are many, often older, people who have just lost the habit of going out to events such as these. I’d hate for them to play to an empty theatre – will you support these young people by going to their show?

Tickets can be bought at Huntingdon Hall box office, Crowngate, Worcester, telephone: 01905611427 or visit www.worcestertheatres.co.uk

 

 

 

What would we do without volunteers?

I recently attended the Volunteer Expo at the Guildhall. It was a delight, as Mayor of Worcester, to speak to and thank some of the stall holders.

I must confess I’ve been on something of a journey with my thinking about charities and volunteering. I used to think, why are we papering over the cracks in support services that have perhaps in the past been provided by the government? Maybe I’m mellowing as I get older, but I’ve come to realise, especially after talking to people like Sally Ellison of Worcester Community Action, that those who give time and money actually receive something very valuable too.

Don’t get me wrong, you have to be in a fairly good financial, emotional and physical position to have the luxury of doing something for others. But if you are in that fortunate position, donating time or money is so rewarding – perhaps it’s just that feeling of empowerment and making a personal difference to something you care about.

So I was very pleased to join more than 300 people at the Volunteer Expo and to see all the many organisations that contribute so much to Worcester – from the South Worcestershire Archaeological Group to Victim Support, and from National Trust to Age UK. The Expo has been running, in various forms, for more than 25 years and it was good to see that attendance numbers were up again after the understandable dip caused by the pandemic.

Age UK Worcester and Malvern Hills is the subject of my Mayor’s charity appeal and I’m pleased to say that you can now make a donation to it at www.worcester.gov.uk/mayor.

On the same day as the Volunteer Expo it was sadly also the funeral of Cllr Simon Cronin. He will be greatly missed by everyone who know him. As one councillor said in an obituary, “it must have taken him ages to walk from one end of the High Street to the other such were the many people who would stop him for a chat.”