Making great tasting beer is our business, but our brewery was always about doing more. We have a unique opportunity to make the space into something more than a brewery. And we have been trying our best to use the space to do some really cool stuff.Carnival came from a chance meeting at fundraiser called the Clearview Carnival in South Liverpool. We always vowed to make events and fundraisers to be central to the Carnival way.
We partnered up with a fab person called Amanda Earley at the end of … (elastic time has kicked in- was it 2019, 2020 or 2021 – nope, defo 2020) 2020. She has been involved in bringing art to the public, running lots of socially inclusive projects in Liverpool. It took a while to get things up and running, but Dom and I decided that a portion of profits from the collaboration beers we have done with musicians would go to funding projects with Amanda and other charitable causes.
It was a double whammy, we have the space, Amanda has the skills and loves what she does. The first workshop we did was funded by the Bonnacons Of Doom beer (our beloved Pracatan). The workshop was set up as a mosaic workshop to make shrines for loved ones lost during the covid lockdowns.
Mosaic was a great medium to work with – not only is it one of our favourite hops, but it was also a great way to describe the day as people from all walks of life came together for lots of collaboration and creation.
Since then we have facilitated more workshops part funded by the Strawberry Guy beer and a generous donation to Public Arts Limited from a friend of Carnival whom we had a sensational celebratory event in the Tasting Room.
We were also inspired by
Pilot Brewery in Leith, who collaborated with us and
Fuerst Wiacek to make
METAMORPHOSED for the last OSEES tour in November 2021 – it was a long time coming after being postponed twice because of you know what. We partnered with
Stay Up Late, a fantastic charity that supports people who have impairments get to gigs.
A wee fundraiser up in Leith’s legendary
Dreadnought Pub co-hosted with the ace Sam from Pilot and can sales have raised enough money for us to make a donation that should get a load of peeps to gigs. We can see this relationship blossoming as live music is such an important part of our lives, the work these guys do to make it possible for others to see their favourite band is worth its weight in gold.
So what’s next for 2022?Our work with Public Arts Limited will continue, of course. We are planning a special workshop for the week before St Patrick’s Day.
Paddy’s Day is a special occasion in Carnival and will be even more special this year with Ruaric’s touch (our new Bar Manager). Ruaric and I are both from Ireland and came over to Liverpool and fell in love with this wonderful city – sometimes affectionately dubbed the second capital of Ireland.
More details to be announced soon, but be sure there will be plenty of music and drink flowing at the next workshop.
So here’s to the next year to you all, let’s make 2022 a year to remember and reclaim elastic time.
Carnival Ade
