Cancelled carnival could be resurrected - chair

BBC CWR joined the parade at the carnival in 2023

A carnival, held in Nuneaton for almost a century and which was all but cancelled due to a lack of volunteers, looks to have been saved.

Charlotte Aspley , the retiring chairwoman, said earlier this week she had made the "horrific" decision to stop the event , which started in 1936, because of a dwindling number of organisers.

But her appeal for someone to take it on has been heard, she said, and she has been speaking to a new team as well as the borough council about holding the carnival in 2025.

"People have listened, the people of Nuneaton have spoken and they want to keep a carnival and someone's prepared to give it a go," she said.

Ms Aspley said running the event had become a lot of work and she had decided to stand down in September to spend more time with her young family and to keep running her business.

Although the majority of this year's £10,000 funding had been raised, she said more people were needed to organise the carnival so the "opportunity was there if someone wanted to take it".

Since she announced her decision on Facebook on Monday, that the event was being cancelled, she said she had been contacted by people willing to take it on - perhaps in a new format which was "good news".

'Big milestone'

"So I've had conversations with them over the last 24-hours and I've spoken with the events team at the council," she said.

"They don't necessarily want to run carnival as it is now, in it's current form, but they're interested in taking it forward and working together to try and build a different sort of carnival."

She said the current committee would be stepping away entirely, with this year's funds to be shared with their nominated charity, as planned, in the next couple of days.

The "business of carnival" would then be handed to the new team on Tuesday, she added.

She said she was pleased and relieved it would be continuing and accepted it was the end of an era for her.

"But the point is, people have listened, the people of Nuneaton have spoken and they want to keep a carnival and someone's prepared to give it a go," Ms Aspley said.

She wished the new team good luck adding: "I really hope they can keep this tradition going.

"We're so close to being 100 years old and it would be super to see it get to that big milestone."