Luton Carnival pushes to 'go green' for 2024 event

Steve Hoyte said Luton Carnival is "brilliant, wonderful, bright and spectacular"

A town carnival that attracts thousands of people is "going green" and becoming more "sustainable", organisers have said.

Claudette Whittingham, the executive director of UK Centre for Carnival Arts, the team behind the Luton Carnival, says the move is the start of a more environmentally-friendly event.

She said the 48th carnival procession on 27 May will this year only use one petrol truck.

The "global tradition" which started in Africa brings the "wow factor" to the town, she added.

Steve Pascal, the executive producer and Claudette Whittingham, the executive director of the UK Centre for Carnival Arts, said the event was all about "mass happiness"

"Carnival is a global tradition but more importantly a tradition that brings people together," Ms Whittingham said.

"If you can see lots of different things, that's when you get the wow factor."

She said this year would be "very different to how it's been done before".

Donated supermarket trollies would be recyled into "mini floats", she added.

"It's part of our development phase, we don't know everything that we need to on the green sustainability agenda but we're starting this year and we're going to continue to build it."

Chauntier's theme for his carnival outfit is angles and he said "a lot of hard work" went into the collective design

Steve Hoyte, an artist in residence, said: "We've put a lot of time into recycling a lot of the old costumes and bringing them up-to- date.

"You may have seen something before but you won't have seen it how it is now."

Janet Skepple said "we're all getting ready for the big day"

Artist Janet Skepple said planning for the next event begins as soon as the carnival finishes every year.

"It's not something we do overnight," she said. "We plan well in advance, we never seem to get ahead as we're always here at the last minute."

She said excitement was building as the children she had been working with were "buzzing - they just can't wait to wear the costumes".

Many organisations from across Luton will take part in the event

Luton Carnival starts in the town centre at 11:00 BST with the parade beginning at 13:00 and continuing until about 16:30.

The whole carnival event is expected to finish at about 18:00 on Monday

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