Liam Thomas has written a fantastic blog about hwo to create a Carnival Float 
So, if you’re looking at this you must be interested in entering a float into Shrewsbury carnival, but the question is how do you go about it?!
I’ve entered a float into the carnival for several years, with my youth group at Riversway Elim Church, with us winning the best youth float last year (in 2010).Be warned, this may sound like a military operation, you need to be very organised in order to enter a float and be successful.
The first thing that you need to do is register to enter a float; you do this by downloading and returning an entry form from www.shrewsburycarnival.co.uk/get-involved. You also need to find a lorry and driver, over the years we have built up a good relationship with Craig from Inter Business Logistics. But you will have to ring around some friendly lorry drivers; you get given a list of hauliers who might be able to help you out.
We usually start thinking about what we are going to do with the lorry as soon as we find out the theme; this year’s theme is Victorian Fun and Games.
We sit down and come up with ideas for the lorry; these are kept a closely guarded secret, so I cannot reveal any of them for this year, but I can talk about some of our ideas from last year. The theme last year was Children’s TV Favourites, some of the ideas that we came up with were; Bob the Builder, SpongeBob Square Pants and the Tellytubbies. We thought about these and the things that we could do with the lorry. We gave these a lot of thought and decided that these would not suit us and work too well. We eventually decided upon Dora the Explorer. We decided this as it would enable us to involve more people from our youth group than the other options; also it enabled us to have people dressed in costumes from different parts of the world.
After this we kept thinking about designs for the lorry and costume ideas, (for my costume I opted for the typical English gentleman, Black suit, Bowler hat, Umbrella and Briefcase!) we scribbled down our ideas and handed them to my mum (It helps to have one person in charge of the lorry, and she’s that person I was her helper who does as told!)
We come up with the final design and start preparing. The best thing for decorating the lorry is painted cardboard, you draw the picture you want onto the card and then paint it. You can later attach these to the side of the lorry. The painting takes a LOT of hard work and time. We had about a week of painting scenery with our team of helpers.
The evening before the carnival the lorry arrives (we can do this as we’ve got parking for it!) so we put some of the scenery on the lorry, anything that can easily be covered or won’t be damaged in rain. We work as long as we can until it gets dark.
The day of the carnival involves an early start so that we can finish putting the scenery on the lorry. All of our helpers throughout the weeks arrive and at around 9:30 we get everyone into their costumes, and set off for the quarry at 10:30. This is a brilliant journey as we have our music blasting out and turn a few heads of unxepecting motorists while driving along. We’re blessed to have our own small PA system that we use for the carnival for playing the music, which is powered by a generator that we hire from a local supplier.
Upon our noisy arrival in the quarry (we were louder than the main arena!!!); we register our arrival with the carnival committee, collect out buckets and park up. This is the point that we add the finishing touches to the lorry (things that would have blown off during the journey there), then we wait for the judges to come round.
After the judging we all get hyped up ready for the procession. We set off with our music playing, everyone dancing and waving, If you were there last year we were the lorry with the loud Dora The Explorer theme tune (it gets quite annoying after you have heard it for the 10th time, and by the 30th repeat you feel like you are going to go MAD, so for your own sanity choose a few different tunes!)
By the time the procession has finished you’ll be absolutely shattered, but the fun continues!
It’s now time for everyone to pile off the lorry and go to the main arena where the winners are announced. It is a VERY tense time, the compulsory gaps are left so make you even more nervous and the winners are announced in reverse order. I remember, as the lorry with second place was announced, being told “oh, we might as well go, we’ve not won anything” to hear our name announced as the winning float in the youth category. I think you could have heard our screams of joy from the opposite side of the quarry!
After having our photo taken with the mayor we returned home, but this time waving the trophy and blasting out “We are the Champions” we were all on a high, and my feet didn’t touch the ground for the next week!
So I hope that this blog has helped you with how to go about entering a float into the carnival, and I hope to see you there in June!
