Broadening horizons

Spiritus, a young peoples’ carnival group based in Uckfield, East Sussex, was born in February 2005 when the co-founders of the group were stranded at the airport on their way to Ghana as part of an international educational trip. Students from Uckfield Community Technology College (UCTC) were going to Kumasi in Ghana to learn from and exchange carnival practices with the students of Armed Forces Secondary Technical School. The procession at the end of the residency was a celebration of the link across cultures. This international collaboration not only had an amazing impact on the students that travelled there, but also triggered the birth of Spiritus. Inspired by the history of carnival, not only in Africa but also in the Caribbean, South America (Brazil, Cuba) and Asia, the organisation was born out of the idea of using carnival arts as a way of having fun, empowering young people and working together across boundaries of age, ability and social group.

Using the theme of slavery for its first year, Spiritus students and two tutors from UCTC explored issues around identity and freedom. They looked at the images that British teenagers from rural East Sussex have about teenagers in Ghana, and vice versa. Sometimes, stereotypes would come in, and would then be the focus of discussion in the making, dancing and playing. The next few years saw growth in order to accommodate the wishes and ambitions of our young members. Spiritus adopted resident teachers for new music and dance groups to complement the makers, developed a stilt section and collaborated with groups such as Same Sky, a community arts group in Brighton, and Kinetika, a London-based international arts company specialising in carnival events. Now Spiritus participates every year in many processional events including the Thames Festival Mayor’s Parade, Brighton Festival Children’s Parade and our own local Uckfield Festival Children’s Parade.
More recently, we focused on a topic closer to our hearts: the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the railway in Uckfield. Working with the Uckfield Preservation Society, the group looked at the issues of building the railway and its socio-economic consequences on the village. We collaborated with the local youth theatre group to put together a promenade performance that touched on the lively local issue of re-opening the rail link with nearby Lewes. This year, the topic is water. That topic links to themes of other festivals running around the county, where the group is asked to perform. We have also linked the theme to another local issue: the floods of 2000. The main point is that, embracing local issues and integrating other artforms, Spiritus manages to perform innovative pieces that build on traditional carnival practices but make them our own. Carnival is used as the avenue to express concerns, feelings and aspirations, characteristics which have defined carnival since its origins. The group, fully owning the process and the outcome of their work, builds their repertoire of music, dance, stilt walking, making and circus skills around issues that influence the community, and they do it focusing on the celebration of being together, of forming a community and of creativity.