12 September 2025.
Crowns, Collaboration & Community: Brighton BASH Carnival 2025.
Welcome to our latest blog, written by Bud Johnston, BARCO – The Black Anti-Racism Community Organisation.
On a blazing July 2025 afternoon, as the rhythm of steel pans rolled through Brighton’s St Ann’s Well Gardens, something powerful was happening - joy. But not just any joy. A joy rooted in resistance, resilience and regeneration.
The Brighton BASH Carnival 2025 was a crown-jewel moment. Quite literally. This year’s theme, Crowns, invited us to reflect on hair, heritage, and history. It asked: What do we inherit, and what do we build for the future? For BARCO, the answer came in costumes, sound systems, food, and young people showcasing and learning about Black culture in a public space with pride. It was also the result of something perhaps quieter but no less significant - collaboration.
Sussex Bay stepped in as one of our key supporters this year, making a meaningful contribution that helped us bring BARCO’s vision to life for its 5th consecutive year. That backing meant more than funding - it meant trust. It signalled a willingness to co-create, to listen, and to understand that environmental justice doesn’t exist in isolation from racial justice. It exists when local Black communities are not just invited in, but actively shaping what sustainability looks like across this coastline.
Why Sussex Bay?
At first glance, you might not expect a nature-focused initiative to support a Black Culture-inspired park carnival. But Sussex Bay has been asking the right questions: Who is this coastline for? Who gets to decide how we care for our land and sea? And whose stories are missing from the narrative of environmental recovery?
In partnering with BARCO and supporting The Brighton BASH, Sussex Bay demonstrated what allyship can look like in action. Not just statements, but systems - investing in events and organisations that create tangible, joyful entry points for people who have historically been excluded from “green” (and blue) conversations. Because engagement doesn’t begin with consultations. It begins with culture.
The Long Game.
This partnership wasn’t a one-off. It’s part of a growing recognition that long-term change requires long-term relationships. At BARCO, we’re committed to helping shift how environmental work is done in Sussex - not just by bringing the Black community into existing work, but by reshaping the work with our community in mind from the start. This means building new pathways for participation, paid community roles, environmental education rooted in lived experience, creative projects that bridge culture and conservation, and shifting who gets funded, heard and celebrated. It means taking up space on panels, in planning rooms, and, yes, on the grass dancefloor of St Ann’s Well Gardens!.
And we’re just getting started.
Where Next?
The 2025 Carnival showed us what’s possible when support flows with integrity and vision. But we know that to build real change, this kind of collaboration needs to go deeper. The climate and ecological crises demand new models - models that are inclusive, imaginative, and justice-led. This isn’t a side project. It is the project.
So, what does the future look like?
It looks like more partnerships between organisations like Sussex Bay and grassroots Black-led groups like BARCO. It looks like communities co-designing seascape recovery. It looks like young people from Black and global majority backgrounds seeing themselves not just as participants, but as custodians of Sussex Bay.
It looks like trust built over time.
It looks like crowns passed down and created anew.
Looking Ahead
To everyone who came to Carnival: thank you for dancing, showing up, and showing what’s possible. To Sussex Bay: thank you for stepping forward - not just for funding, but for partnership. To the wider community: we’re building something bold, together. It’s slow work. It’s deep work. But it’s happening. Who knows the theme for the 2026 Brighton BASH Carnival could be sea, coast and water inspired! Watch this space.
Thank you
Thank you Bud for your time and care in writing this blog. We look forward to continuing to collaborate to put nature and people first together. Our next blog will be written by Noel Hatch, Assistant Director for People and Change, Adur & Worthing Councils, and will share innovative ways Councils and communities are collaborating together.
