HISTORY OF THE CLUB

   

The founding of the Sidvale Carnival Club by a group of local enthusiasts was nothing less than a complete gamble. Beginning on the back of the Sidvale athletic committee in 1983, seven pioneers decided that it might be fun to start a club, so they bit the bullet and gave it a go. Eighteen years on, the child of those devotees has been nurtured into the largest feature carnival club in Devon.     Two of the founders, Marion, and Barry Perry from Sidford, are still instrumental in the running of the club and have worked with it since its inception.     I think it was the Sidmouth Lions, Marion began.   They mentioned to some of the athletic club that they wanted to get the carnival scene going again.  It was a chance comment really, but we just thought why not?  It was a complete Gamble, and we knew we were getting ourselves into a lot of hard work, but we thought we'd give it a shot. Hard work is perhaps an understatement. The planning and construction of the float, as well as numerous fund-raising schemes to accumulate the necessary capital, is a full time commitment.    We begin to plan next year's carnival in November. continued Marion. We think about it for a couple of months, but by January we have picked our secret theme and then the Building and fundraising starts, With a whole host of activities from coffee mornings to jumble sales, horse-race evenings to quizzes and cabarets, the club works frantically to raise the minimum of 10,000 Pounds, whilst the craftsman and DIY gurus in the ranks get to work on the 96-foot convoy. And everybody gets involved. We have 40-odd members between 16 and 70 years old the older ones often doing the grafting and the younger ones do things like the painting.  But we are finding that we are short on builders, carpenters and electricians, Most small clubs like us have this problem. It takes an awful lot of time you see. We have to work on it for two nights and on Sunday mornings every week. Come June and July, we are doing several hours every night.   But something about Sid Vale Carnival Club gives the impression that hard work and money are not important. These are people for whom it is a vocation rather than an investment, something which they start afresh year after year. No we don't do it for the money,     Paul Hargreaves of Victoria Laundry sponsors us very generously, helping us out with garage space and supplies of diesel, And it certainly isn't sweetness and light all the time. But we have a real mix of people in the club - postman, nurses, housewives, students, as well as 'retired' members who still get themselves involved. More than anything else it really is tremendous fun if it wasn't so rewarding, I don't think the club would exist.