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20,000 visitors boost for festival staged in Crystal Palace Park

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Stereo MC’s on the main stage at last weekend’s Crystal Palace Festival. Photo: George Dyer

The star dust has barely settled after another rip-roaringly successful Crystal Palace Festival, which culminated last weekend with 20,000 flocking to the park for the free music event that featured Stereo MCs, Polarbear, Rodney P & Skitz and too many more to mention.

“Festival goers have been posting feedback on social media with overwhelmingly positive comments about the event,” festival organisers told Inside Croydon today.

And already, the planning – and vital fund-raising – for 2019’s event is underway.

The budget for the Crystal Palace Festival, including much increased security costs since the London Bridge attacks in 2017, is now around £250,000, with only around £12,000 in contributions from the boroughs around the park, including Croydon. In contrast, Croydon Council has handed over around £500,000 of public cash in the past three years to commercial venue Boozepark for its promotional activities.

So the Crystal Palace Festival organisers are hoping that festival-goers and the community will rally round.

“We are delighted that our visitors had such a great time at the festival and we are very proud to have pulled off another free event for the whole community to come and enjoy,” said Noreen Meehan, the festival director.

“We are an independent, not-for-profit organisation and each year we raise £250,000 to deliver this event for our community. We get 5 per cent of our funding from local councils and we raise funds through trading, events and grants but we also need people to support us.”

The dance routine by ASKI was among the many community performances at the festival. Photo: Pawel Gawronski

Meehan and her team mates ask those who attended the festival – whether the big Saturday music event or any of the other festival fringe events staged in and around Crystal Palace during the week – to donate a few pounds, “and help us bring it back in 2019”.

The online donation site is here.

Local traders, community groups, artists and pubs all put on their own events as part of this very community-focused event. The week also saw the delivery of outreach concerts by the London Mozart Players in care homes and at the local park farm, and the culmination of education projects by the festival team and other partners.

These projects included a mural to celebrate a cinema coming to Crystal Palace designed and painted by local young people at 25 Church Road, and a dance promenade performance in Crystal Palace Park by older people from ASKI in Thornton Heath and young people from Oasis Academy Coulsdon led by Grounded Movement.


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