Event cancelled: Due to the ‘unprecedented popularity of this event (Canalival organisers) are longer able to provide adequate safety measures or secure the confidence of the authorities.’ Visit the Canalival Facebook page for full details.
Crowdfunding’s been big news as of late, both for its winners (Zach Braff, who controversially scored £1.7 million from fans) and for its losers (Melissa Joan Hart, aka ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’, who could only scrape together a measly £34,000 before having her project cancelled). London’s latest addition to the winners’ column is Canalival, billed as the capital’s ‘first and only floating carnival’. The project recently raised a cool £3,322 on spacehive.com, which ain't bad for a group relative unknowns without much more than a dinghy and a dream.
The plan is simple, and simply brilliant: put a sound system on a barge; get samba bands, dancers and circus-types to perform; attract a massive carnival-style flotilla, with hundreds of punters on rafts, kayaks and dinghies; float down the Regent’s Canal in a Dionysian tangle of limbs and inflatable madness.
The fun kicks (paddles?) off at noon where the canal passes under New North Road in Islington, then weaves east before settling at Broadway Market and continuing into the wee hours. Visit the Canalival Facebook page for details.