A brand-new free exhibition is about to fill Outernet’s giant screens with six decades of Notting Hill Carnival, told through the lens of one photographer who has barely missed a year since 1976.
Carnival 60: Ian Watts at Outernet opens on 27 August and runs until 2 September, transforming the immense screens at Outernet London, just above Tottenham Court Road station, into a moving tribute to Notting Hill Carnival as it turns 60. The installation is free to visit and draws entirely on the archive of Ian Watts, a photographer who bought his first camera as a teenager in the summer of 1976 and has documented Carnival almost every year since.
Sixty years of Carnival, told across some of the world’s biggest screens
Outernet is the UK’s most visited cultural attraction, its screens among the largest and most advanced in the world, and the installation makes full use of them. It opens with a montage of vibrant, full-colour imagery from recent Carnivals before moving into Ian’s black-and-white photographs from his first visits in the 1970s. From there, the piece works chronologically through a new collection spanning the 80s and 90s, then a collage of images from 2000 to 2019, a period that traces Carnival’s rapid growth, ever more elaborate costumes, ever bigger sound systems, before closing with a sequence bringing the audience right up to the Carnival of today.
A photographic journey that started with a second-hand camera
Ian’s own Carnival story is a good one. He bought his first camera in the summer of 1976, a teenager just out of school and living in a youth hostel in Harlesden, and was taking photographs of the local area when friends suggested he check out Notting Hill Carnival. He went along with his recently purchased second-hand camera, not knowing he was about to begin a photographic journey that would last decades. He has attended and documented every Notting Hill Carnival since, bar one.
“The Outernet exhibition is the culmination of a long photographic journey,” said Ian Watts. “It is particularly meaningful to see photographs made with humble analogue cameras and film in the 1970s and 1980s displayed alongside my more recent digital images. These photographs span generations of technology, but the people, energy, creativity and spirit of Carnival connect them all. For me, this is more than an exhibition of photographs. It is a record of a community, a culture and a changing London.”
Scott Neal, Creative Director of Culture and Lifestyle at Outernet, added: “Ian’s Carnival story is itself amazing. The pictures that he has taken from being a young boy to today across six decades are a vibrant record of what Carnival is about and how important it is to the fabric of London. We are proud to be able to use his pictures to create this piece at Outernet and celebrate the 60th birthday of Notting Hill Carnival.”
The London x London Take: the real pull here is seeing Carnival’s evolution laid out at this scale, sixty years of the same event, the same streets, and the same spirit, but on screens the size of a building. It’s a fitting way to mark the milestone, and it’s a five-minute walk from our own guide to this year’s Notting Hill Carnival, which returns across the August Bank Holiday weekend, so it’s easy to make a proper day of both.
Need to know
- What: Carnival 60: Ian Watts at Outernet
- Where: Outernet London, 19 Denmark Street, London WC2H 8NE
- When: 27 August to 2 September 2026
- Price: Free, no booking required
- More info: outernet.com
