The story
Carnival of Cultures Berlin in Berlin
The Karneval der Kulturen is a Pentecost-weekend street festival and parade in Kreuzberg, founded in 1996 as a response to racist violence in Rostock-Lichtenhagen and organised by the Werkstatt der Kulturen. More than five thousand performers from Berlin's community and diaspora organisations march in a single afternoon parade, accompanied by street stalls and music across the neighbourhood, drawing crowds in the hundreds of thousands.
Kreuzberg's Karneval der Kulturen began on 15 and 16 May 1996 as an organised response to the racist attacks in Rostock-Lichtenhagen a few years earlier, an event conceived less as a party than as a public statement about Berlin's multicultural population.