APPEAL TO HELP KEEP CARNIVAL SPIRIT ALIVE
ABATTLE is on to save a Welsh carnival which is in jeopardy more than 80 years after it first started. Llandovery and District Carnival in Carmarthenshire has been a firm fixture on the Whitsun weekend for decades – but now a dwindling committee, partly due to age and illness, means there is a call to arms to help it survive.
Chairman Peter Jones said the town’s carnival has attracted thousands of people over the years and the numbers still hold up today, with “a couple of thousand” coming together in celebration every year.
“No-one can quite pinpoint the exact first date of the carnival here but it’s believed it would have been at the time of King George in 1936, some say it was later, in 1940.
“But regardless, the carnival has run ever since then, attracting a couple of thousand people.”
“We want people to help with the organising,” said Peter. “They don’t have to become committee members or anything. Just give some time to help. It would be a shame to lose it.”
Elsewhere in Wales you will find similar tales of small but committed teams putting on carnivals every year.
In Pill in Newport, five women organise the plans for the annual carnival, around a small table in the back of a flower shop.
Ann Barton, who has been on the Pill Carnival Committee for two decades, said it is the very coming together of the community that is at the heart of any carnival.
“People know exactly what it is and we encourage the celebration of many cultures.
“We have the Filipinos here now and they come in their traditional dress. It’s a family day for everyone.”
She added: “I’m the oldest on the committee, coming up to 73, but there’s a few of us that sit around the table at the florist on Commercial Road and we plan the day.”
Pill Carnival still has traditions such as floats and carnival queens.
But Ann said that red tape and bureaucracy don’t make things easy for carnivals.
She said: “If it was made easier with less fuss and red tape I’m sure more places would see their carnivals carry on, but it is hard.”
Carmarthen is one town which went three decades without a carnival. But it made a triumphant return in 2016 and managed to capture some of its former glory.
Jenny Fox, one of those responsible for its return, said: “Carmarthen went from a huge carnival celebration – when there used to be the star of soaps such as Coronation Street coming along, to nothing after 1986.
“So we were happy to be able see it return two years ago and would love to see it happen again.”
A short distance from Carmarthen, in the village of Llansteffan, at the mouth of the River Towy, you will find a week-long Fiesta celebration taking the carnival fever to a full seven days.