Rhaune Laslett

Rhaune Laslett (15 April 1919 – 28 April 2002) was a community activist and the principal organiser of the Notting Hill Fayre or Festival, that evolved into the Notting Hill Carnival.

Rhaune Laslett was born in the East End of London to a Native American mother from North Carolina and a Russian father.

In 1947 she married an Australian artist and was divorced five years later. In 1960 she was a matron of the Pixie Hollow home in Grove Road Ramsgate, Kent.

She set up the Children's Play Group at 34 Tavistock Crescent that was visited on 15 May 1966 by Muhammad Ali prior to his fight against Henry Cooper.

She became president of the London Free School, organised by a coalition of local activists, including some emerging underground artists of the area, particularly John "Hoppy" Hopkins. The aims of the school were "to promote cooperation and understanding between people of various races and creeds through education and through working together".John Michell and Michael X provided 26 Powis Terrace as a base and the idea was born of a free festival, which became the Notting Hill Carnival.

In a series of articles to newspaper correspondents and in The Grove (newsletter of the Free School), Laslett outlined the aims of the festival – that the various culture groups of Notting Hill become more familiar with each other's customs, to bring more colour and life to the streets and to counter the perception of the area being a run-down slum. As she stated to The Grove, “We felt that although West Indians, Africans, Irish and many other nationalities all live in a very congested area, there is very little communication between us. If we can infect them with a desire to participate then this can only have good results.” The "Notting Hill Fayre and Pageant", or the London Free School Fair, was held over a week from 18 September 1966, and, as well as featuring a pageant that included "a man dressed as Elizabeth I and children as Charles Dickens characters", there was "a Portobello parade consisting of the London Irish girl pipers, a West Indian New Orleans-style marching band, Ginger Johnson’s Afro-Cuban band, and Russell Henderson’s Trinidadian steelband from the Coleherne pub in Earl's Court, followed by a fire engine".

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