Didn’t they do well

Some happy passistas on the Sunshine Coast of Australia who made their own headdresses and costumes! What do you think?

Me being a Barracuda!

Hello, I’m Ellen-Louise Moore. I have been in the Barracudas for four years now and I love it! There is nowhere else like this in Barrow. I’ve shared many different experiences with the other lovely people who are also in the Barracudas. I first joined a few years back because one of my friends had. So glad that she told me all about it and I thought I’d try it out. So happy that I did because I met so many lovely people here and now some of them are like my best friends. I have been to many places that I’d never of dreamed of going! We have been all over Britain, from our hometown Barrow to Glasgow up in Scotland.

When I first joined Barracudas I started trying out stilt walking but in the end I found that stilts just were not for me, so I became a dancer instead. My first carnival was a Christmas one, and it was in my words ‘Beautiful’ because we were all lit up with our fancy lights attached to our costumes. The Barracudas Band sounded great! Our stilt walkers always behind us as they are the taller ones! They are always easily spotted.

The Carnivals are great! Early mornings, long coach journeys there and back but it is all worth the experience. Doing the carnivals is great, we do them in all weathers and places! We’ve been through thick snow, heavy rain, blazing hot sun and still survived. I look forward to Thursdays every week knowing I’m coming to Barracudas that night, I also love it when Carnival season is around so we get to start the carnivals. We’re invited to come to many different places over Britain to be part of their carnival and many other carnival arts groups from all over the world are also invited, we meet so many people at these carnivals and they always give us ideas for our next costume theme. This year we have a theme of a circus! Our main colours this year are yellow, red, purple, black and white, so you can’t miss us really.

Recently I did my school work experience here at Barracudas and it had been really great, very tiring too but this is what we have got to do to look great in the carnivals.
I’ve done many things, I’ve been sewing, designing, cleaning, cutting, drawing, unpicking, I’ve also learnt many new techniques on how to make costumes and other materials that are needed at Barracudas. I also made myself my own pair of leggings for me to wear, by using the techniques that I have learnt and will be very useful in the future.

Arts Council England hit Barracudas hard

Funding application to Arts Council National Portfolio outcome:

2011/12: £45451
2012/13: £0
2013/14: £0
2014/15: £0

A Flying Start…

We will be recommencing our workshops on Thursday 27th January – 5pm-6pm: Rising Stars music workshop suitable for all aged 5-25, and 6-8pm: Carnival Night with dancing, music and stilts. All welcome to join our carnival gang at Barracudas, corner of Bath Street/Abbey Road.
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2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow.

Crunchy numbers

The average container ship can carry about 4,500 containers. This blog was viewed about 14,000 times in 2010. If each view were a shipping container, your blog would have filled about 3 fully loaded ships.

In 2010, there were 14 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 54 posts. There were 10 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 13mb. That’s about a picture per month.

The busiest day of the year was March 8th with 153 views. The most popular post that day was Headdress frames.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were barracudas.org.uk, en.wordpress.com, facebook.com, artscouncil.org.uk, and search.bt.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for carnival costumes, carnival headdresses, samba headdress, carnival headdress, and headdresses.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Headdress frames March 2008
27 comments

2

carnival materials May 2008
31 comments

3

About Barracudas December 2007
16 comments

4

Backpack without Wings + International Postage June 2009
1 comment

5

Svenska Dansband! October 2008

Caution – Carnival making season ahead!

We do have headdress frames that are made in Rio de Janeiro. If you would like more information, send us an email: barracudas.carnival@gmail.com.

Christmas Parades

Here we are in Carlisle on Thursday evening (25th Nov). So many thousands of people out in the city centre despite sub zero temperature…
Langholm on Sat 4th, and Brough on Sat 11th…

The Carnival Allstars in Carlisle

This is the first outing of our new Carnival Allstars – some of our best, most dedicated young performers, making an appearance at the opening of Community House, Raffles Estate, Carlisle on Saturday 18th September 2010.

princes park liverpool

Brouhaha 2010 pt2-59, originally uploaded by Mr Nessy.

some of our dancers