Carnival of CollaborART, May 23-26, 2025

Turner Prize nominee Delaine Le Bas giving a free talk during the Carnival

Ukranian Collective Hromoda singing as part of the Carnival

Campervan Collective, co-founded by the artist, was Inspired by the enduring traditions of Carnival—which historically gave voice to the oppressed through celebration, excess, and subversion—to create the Carnival of Collabor-ART, a four-day free art event in May 23-26, 2025 to create community, joy, and dissent.

The Carnival responded directly to the increasing normalisation of xenophobia and systemic racism, as seen in the UK's hostile environment immigration policies, and globally, in the return of strongman politics and cultural censorship. With Trump back in power, the spectre of state-sanctioned hate, surveillance, and repression looms larger than ever. The Carnival of CollaborART offered an urgent alternative: a people-powered, collaborative space where diverse communities can come together to express solidarity, and imagine new futures rooted in equality and care.

The approach was participatory and intersectional. The Carnival centred the lived experiences of migrant, queer, working-class and racialised communities, inviting them to lead and shape the artistic conversation. Artists like Romani Turner prize nominated Delaine Le Bas spoke about cultural survival and exclusion. Diana Valazero (Ecuador), invited participants to embroider their migration stories onto a travelling dress, and the Ukrainian political choir Hromoda, who blend folk song with wartime testimony, offered deeply personal performances, workshops and talks.

These voices—often ignored in dominant political discourse—took centre stage in the Carnival. Twelve workshops explored care-giving, family and identity. Through spoken word, embroidery, music, and masquerade, the Carnival offered tools to subvert social norms and empower participants to rewrite dominant narratives about who belongs and whose stories matter.

Carnival’s enduring political power lies in its structure. It has always embraced excess and release as a way to challenge austerity and repression, role reversal and masquerade to destabilise power hierarchies, and cultural fusion to honour diasporic creativity and survival. By embodying these elements, our Carnival became an act of joyful rebellion—one that uses art to question borders, and build community across difference.

The campervan float was a mobile site of participation, inviting people to write, draw and its’ sides, or to simply have a conversation. The whole event was free, open to all, and held over a public holiday to maximise accessibility. All artists and facilitators donated their time, making the Carnival a gift to the community.

Through this celebration, the Campervan Collective aimed to challenge oppressive systems—not with fear or despair, but with imagination, togetherness, and creative resistance. They believe the most powerful political acts are those that build joy, centre care, and invite everyone to take part.

Talks - Delaine Le Bas, Vlatka Horvat, Dr. Harold Offeh, Jose Abad & Diana Valazero, Roberta De Caro

Performances (Poetry, Dance, Vocal) - ÜHES Choir, Arambh Kathak Pathshala, Ukrainian Hromoda Choir, Joseph Winsborrow

Workshops