The Kitchen Carnival

The Kitchen Carnival 2024 celebrates the Trinidadian ‘Ole Mas’ character of the Dragon. A girl conjures up the Carnival Dragon Spirit with the help of a Witch. The Spirit enters the kitchen recycling and takes people over.

The Kitchen Carnival celebrates the ‘Old Mas’ traditions of Trinidad and Tobago, using recycled household materials. We film our work in our own homes and put it together to create a group performance on video. We explore the history of Carnival as a response by enslaved African peoples to the elaborate balls held by slave owners, making costumes from whatever they could find, and mocking the behaviour of the wealthy. Our 2024 theme is Dragons and you can watch our performance above. Click here to read our Dragon Poetry from the Together! 2012 Pop-Up Poetry Club.

Ink sketch of an early beast or dragon costume: they allowed for slithering on the ground, and always had chains and locks around their waists. (From the website: Traditional Mas Archive http://www.traditionalmas.com/project/dragon/)

You can enjoy all of the Kitchen Carnival activities from home using things from your kitchen, scissors and a glue stick.There are Dragon activities on this page for independent enjoyment, and activities on linked pages for previous year’s themes. In 2023 we celebrated Pierrot Grenades, in 2022 we celebrated Fancy Sailors, and in 2021 we celebrated Bats – you can watch the performances on the linked pages too. You can also create your own percussion instruments from things you have in your kitchen. We’d love to see your work – email photos to us info@together2012.org.uk or tag us on social media (ukdpctogether on X, together2012cic on other channels).

How to make a Kitchen Carnival Dragon costume with Clary Salandy: Part 1 & 2.
Download Part 1 and 2 of the instructions as a PDF: Making a Kitchen Carnival Dragon Costume Part 1 & 2

How to make a Kitchen Carnival Dragon costume with Clary Salandy: Part 3.
Download Part 3 of the instructions as a PDF: Making a Kitchen Carnival Dragon Costume Part 3

How to make a Kitchen Carnival Dragon costume with Clary Salandy: Part 4.

How to Make a Kitchen Carnival Dragon’s Tail with Clary Salandy

How to Make Dragon Claws from Kitchen Foil with Clary Salandy

How to make Dragon claws from paper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wG-be04ZVI

How to move like a Kitchen Carnival Dragon for the camera

You can move like a dragon even if you are sitting down.

  • Use your hands like claws – see above for how to make paper claws to go over your fingers. Experiment with moving and stretching your hands and fingers in front of your screen. OR:
  • Use your hands and arms as wings. Experiment with different ways of ‘flying’. You can easily give the impression of moving forward while staying in one place. (If you film your performance on Zoom, you can use a ‘virtual background’ to show the sky.)
  • Move your head to look around – this will also show your dragon mask from different angles.
  • Imagine you are moving forward despite being held back by chains. Try moving your shoulders in opposite circles to give the impression of movement while staying in one place.

Here is a Spotify playlist of songs about Dragons for you to move to: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2q0EweZYFAp9bmGdOoPQ7s?si=4c4d138413c047f6

Reading about Dragons

What to collect for Kitchen Carnival costume-making:

  • Cereal boxes
  • foil
  • kitchen paper inner rolls
  • toilet paper inner rolls
  • egg boxes
  • yoghurt pots
  • paper plates
  • cardboard packaging
  • clingfilm
  • jars
  • cans
  • junk mail
  • paper cups.

View some of Clary Salandy’s Carnival Dragon designs within this video (Euro Dragon 96 22s into the film; dragons at the 2009 Special Olympics 2m30s): https://www.mahoganycarnival.com/

How to make a Baby Dragon from an empty toilet roll tube

Once you have made your Baby Dragon, you can find out how to make a stop-motion animation video with it here: https://youtu.be/aCqFRgx3XTQ