There’s a moment – mid-skank, jerk sauce still tingling on your lips, basslines vibrating up through your soles – when Carnival just clicks. On Tavistock Road, golden hour melted into the sound system haze. I’d lost count of the number of times I hugged strangers like old friends. It’s that kind of weekend.
“Bro, this is church for me,” Kieran, 28 from Hackney told me, sweat beading on his forehead, Red Stripe in hand. “This is how we worship culture.”
Among the big trucks and bigger bass, it was the quieter scenes that stayed with me: a little girl on her dad’s shoulders waving a Trinidad flag like a pro, two aunties dancing in sync like they’d rehearsed all year, friends screaming when they spotted each other from across the crowd.
At the food stall, while my jerk chicken sizzled on the grill and the scent of scotch bonnet clung to the air, the woman serving me barely missed a beat. “That man over there? He’s been coming to me since ’98,” she said, nodding towards a regular in a soca tee and gold chain. “I knew him before he had that belly.” She winked, then turned back to me with a smile that said she’d seen it all. “People think it’s chaos – but there’s order in this. Community runs it. We don’t need permission to celebrate who we are.”
I spoke with photographer Eduardo Serda – Vienna-born, now a local living in Notting Hill – about what drew his eye across the chaos. His images move with the rhythm of the day: drawn not to spectacle but to the subtle and sincere. They capture the intimacy of Carnival – the fleeting glances, spontaneous movement, and quiet moments of connection that can so easily be lost in the noise.
Yes, Carnival is resistance. Yes, it’s heritage.
But it’s also: doubles for breakfast, catching the bass from Rampage before you even see the stage, people bussin’ a whine on balconies, falling in love for an afternoon, maybe for life. It’s as much about the frontline as the background, as much about Claudia Jones as it is about callaloo. It’s both legacy and vibes.
“Only place I’ve ever seen Grenfell, Windrush, and soca on the same street,” said Malik, 34. “And that matters.”
