LOVING DALSTON was an early fan of the Hackney Carnival. When it started, local news outlets tended with some snootiness to ignore it.

Anyone who has seen any of the last years’ will know, however, that the event is of Notting Hill standard, although, happily, much smaller. And, thanks to Hackney council, better-organised.

The Hackney One Carnival, as the council now calls it, bursts on to the streets on Sunday 11 September 2016 with feathers and glitter galore, enough wings to launch a thousand angels and hundreds of children and adults bopping, bumping and blinging it to the beat of truck-transported steel-pan bands and sound systems.

The borough will shake to the sound of calypso, reggae, grime, afrobeat, soca and no doubt other varieties of music: a multiculti delight.

Gillett Square N16 8AZ, a few hundred metres north of Dalston Kingsland station, will become a children’s play area, and Ridley Road E8 2NP, usually host to the great six-day-a-week fruit ’n’ veg market, will go into after-party mode. Homes and businesses in the street will be invited to dress the front of their homes and shops carnival-style to be in with a chance of a prize.

Loving Dalston could not wait for September to see some of the artistic creations so early this summer it popped along to a council building in De Beauvoir lent by the council to the Tropical Isles Carnival Group.

Under a few leaders, youngsters have been hard at work, after school and in their holidays, designing and sewing and devising dance routines, as you can see from some of the exclusive Loving Dalston photographs on this page.

The carnival parade starts in Ridley Road at 2pm: for the route, press this link.

David Altheer o70916

* Backstory: Carnival inna Hackney stylee; Hackney cancels streetfest as cops fear looting; A year of bargain cooking from the market

* All pictures on this page © DavidAltheer [at] gmail.com, and all for sale for reproduction, apart from those supplied by  Tropical Isles. Most photographs are available in bigger formats

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