Thousands flocked to the city centre this bank holiday Monday for the Leicester Belgrave Mela which celebrated its 34th year.
The day long festival which spread out across the city centre entertained the public with a mixture of South Asian art, dance, music and culture.
Regardless of some heavy downpours of rain throughout the day, the crowds still turned up to enjoy themselves, watching the live entertainment of dancers, singers and musicians. Another attraction to the festival was the Indian Bazaar which was held in the Leicester marketplace due to it being a bank holiday it was a very different sight to the normal fruit and veg sales, people were provided a choice of various foods that were cooked on site to take away, amongst that was a haberdashery of bright jewellery and clothes with live music from time to time.
Pravin Mistry Festival Director, spoke to Pukaar News and told us why it is now held in the city centre, “We’ve had different locations Cossington park, Abbey park, now we want to bring it into the town centre. I think the town centre is nice because when the weather is not so kind to us like today, people still come out because it’s not muddy. We want people from all communities, all parts of Leicester to come. So now they can just catch a bus into the City centre, so it’s slightly different than the years gone past when it was in a park”.
One visitor to the event told us what he thought to the festival, “Brilliant, we have the Caribbean carnival, we’ve got this. I wish we had more from the Chinese and other communities, it brings the culture and diversity into the city I think it’s great, I’m all for it!”
Another member of the public had this to say “Leicester is so cosmopolitan, so this is great, having the food, and a bit of the dancing, you can hear the drums as well, something good for Leicester”.
