The Katumba Halloween Carnival Is Back!
This Halloween, you’re invited to be part of Katumba’s Halloween Carnival & celebrations, with workshops, activities, performances – for all the family!
The Katumba Halloween Carnival Is Back!
This Halloween, you’re invited to be part of Katumba’s Halloween Carnival & celebrations, with workshops, activities, performances – for all the family!
It’s our favourite time of the year – the Katumba Halloween festival is coming back to Liverpool! Every October, we take to the streets of Liverpool and transform the city into a carnival-ground of stunning, visual and imaginative performances, and this year promises to be even bigger and better than before! Ready to join in a spectacular night of drums, fire, dance and performance?
Not only that, but it’s also Black History Month, so this year, we’re celebrating October and Halloween with “Routes & Roots – Festival of the African Diaspora” – two weeks of FREE, family-friendly cultural and wellbeing activities that celebrate the heritage, culture and practices of people of the African Diaspora, and we’re welcoming the whole community to join us! Click here to find out more and get involved! We’ll be putting on a range of Black History Month events in Liverpool, so there’s plenty to get involved with!
What is the African Diaspora?
The African diaspora is the worldwide collection of communities descended from native Africans or people from Africa predominantly in the Americas, through both voluntary and involuntary movement. “African Diaspora” most commonly refers to the descendants of the West and Central Africans who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries, with their largest populations in Brazil, the United States and Haiti. The diaspora has had a significant impact on global culture, inspiring art, music, dance, and cultural practices.
As October is Black History Month – being a group which is deeply influenced by Afro-Brazilian art – we wanted to celebrate our heritage by connecting with other groups to deliver an array of workshops, activities and performances of the African diaspora, culminating in our Halloween Carnival on the 31st. We can’t wait to get out there and drum up a storm this year!
Celebrating Black History Month, alongside the heritage, culture and wellbeing practices of the African Diaspora, all ties in perfectly to the Halloween parade too, because this Halloween we’ll be combining all that in our festival’s theme – voodoo!
Voodoo
Voodoo is often misunderstood, but it is a powerful and moving expression of the African Diaspora and their perseverance and strength, and that’s what we’re hoping to capture with this year’s Black History Month events in Liverpool. Wherever there is a strong African Diaspora presence, you are likely to find voodoo traditions, which is why there are different strands of the faith in Haiti, the Caribbean, Cuba, and both North and South America. As a diaspora faith, it is an expression of changing cultural conditions – when Africans were taken by the colonial powers and stripped of their prior identities, they brought their old religions with them, but were no longer able to practice them openly. When the traditional African faiths combined with Roman Catholicism, it gave these old religions ways to be expressed, even in dark times, and Voodoo was born.
We’re so excited to get to honour that strength and faith in this year’s events, to teach you all about it and to be able to share knowledge and culture of the African Diaspora with you over this Black History Month. We can’t wait to see you out there!
A veve image used to invoke Papa Legba – the voodoo loa spirit who guards doors, gates, roads and crossing-over points. It’s important to get on his good side before you do anything with voodoo!
OCTOBER KEY DATES & EVENTS
Saturday 16th October – Festival Opening Day
A full day of free workshops for all the family and all ages, where you can get an introduction to different art forms and activities! Click here to see our programme of activities and book your free ticket.
17th – 30th October – Community Workshops
A diverse programme of workshops that will give you the chance to learn skills and/or build props to showcase at the Katumba Halloween Carnival on the 31st! There will also be online workshops with international guest artists!
31st October – Katumba Halloween Carnival
A night-time showcase of professional groups and community participants with spectacular props and costumes! Think drums, dance and fire! All performances will pop-up unexpectedly and spookily around L1… Come to town, keep your ear to the ground and follow the sounds!
2019’s Halloween Parade was featured in the Liverpool Echo, and it was our biggest yet – but Halloween is a very mysterious time, and you never know what may be in store for this year! Since we were able to secure funding from Arts Council England, our last parade meant we could transform Liverpool City Centre into a spooky wonderland of imagination, putting on a dramatic and spectacular show for audiences all through the city, and inspiring and engaging them with a festival of lights, fire, dancers, drums and music!
If you want a glimpse of what that was like, take a look at the video below!
Want to find out more or get involved? Book a place on one of the events above or come along on the 31st – we’d love to see you! Click the button below for more information, or send us a message today:
ID: 6308
