Agency founders, Chiamaka Ojechi, Joshua Allen, and Ebele Davis, primarily sought inspiration in one of Carnival’s key pillars: The sound systems.

Paq works is the London-based agency behind the Carnival Sounds creative direction. We wanted to bring together a team of creatives who are part of the community, who love Carnival, and have been raised with that experience – like the founding team of paq works.

The result was a place digital-Carnival-goers could really delve deep into the music and what’s behind it, listen to playlists by the sound systems and DJ’s as well as high-profile artist takeovers, catch up on the history and culture, and check in on their favourite sound systems over Carnival week, via links to the main Notting Hill Carnival organization’s live-streams.įinally (and most importantly), as far as coming up with a creative vision for the site, we didn’t want this to be about us making it entirely ourselves. Episodes about everything from the music, sound system culture, and bass culture we delved into Windrush stories, and the stories of the individuals behind Carnival as well. We curated a series of Carnival-related podcasts, as well as commissioning new ones. We wanted to make sure we were bringing that community to life on the site. For many, Carnival is their biggest outlet of artistic expression throughout the year, be that through music, costume or dance. The majority of people involved in the festival each year are from the Caribbean diaspora and have lived in London for a long time. We had a wealth of music already available to us on the platform, but it was important that we highlight and celebrate the faces behind Carnival, and allow them to take control and curate that music in the same way they would live at the event. The idea was to create a Carnival audio-visual experience, all hosted on a microsite. The positive side of this was that we could really support the Carnival organization by helping them get to where they needed to be: in a digital space. It became clear pretty early on that Carnival, as we know it, wouldn’t be going ahead in 2020. When this project kicked-off in late 2019, it was a very different time - we assumed a partnership with Notting Hill Carnival would involve a live event in some form.

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