Mare de Gras

Shared by Ian Rathbone
"There was a council officer who got some funding from somewhere, and he said ‘Let's have a Hackney Carnival, like they do in Notting Hill’. So he named it Mare De Gras and we just started to get people together.

It was called Mare De Gras. Because when we had Mare De Gras lots and lots of silly people kept correcting us saying ‘it's Mardi Gras’ No! Mare Street. Mare De Gras. It's a joke!

It was much more about dancing in Mare Street than a procession through the streets. It was more about an expression of people's culture, a way of being multicultural, on the streets in front of people. To say this is what happens, you don't see it because you don't see them in their Community Halls having their meetings. And here they are out on the street in their full costumes and this is what we're reflecting back to you.

It was Caribbean groups, definitely. The whole model was Notting Hill carnival in Hackney, so it was principally that community, but wanting to work with other community groups as well.

Mare De Gras was really a voluntary thing. The posters probably do have a Hackney logo on it, but principally it was obviously relying on volunteers, people to volunteer time. It was a great thing, it really was great. It's really great to see outside the town hall lots of dancing going on in the square, stalls and things like that.

I'm a great supporter of the Carnival, but I think my fear has always been, perhaps it’s where I've come from, is that the council becomes a dead hand and it starts saying ‘oh you can only do it this way, you can only have it that way.’ Whereas the groups are much more kind of free-flowing, aren't they? You know, ‘Can we turn up a three instead of one?’ ‘I know we said we were going to do this particular display, but we've decided to do that display because that's what happened in our workshop’. But actually the council's been really good, as far as I can see, and it has worked out.

Even then with the Mare De Gras it means that some members of the community can make some money, out selling food on the side of the road, and so it's kind of a bit of an economy thing as well, and much more so now I think."