Stereo MC’s performing on the main stage at last year’s Crystal Palace Festival. Photo: George Dyer
The Crystal Palace Festival has announced its dates for 2019, but has had to scale down the music and dance performances in the park, which last year saw thousands of people enjoying an open air concert headlined by Stereo MC’s.
With a bill for staging the event of £250,000 in 2018, and the budget for the free festival coming entirely from fund-raising activities, the organisers have decided they need to exercise a little caution, while continuing to collaborate with locally based arts organisations and artists such as the London Mozart Players, Grounded Movement and the Dulwich Picture Gallery.
Festival director Noreen Meehan told Inside Croydon, “As an independent charity, we are working to create a sustainable model for the Festival. The costs for the 2018 event were approximately £250,000, so we need to take some time off from the larger park event to hopefully bring that sustainability about.
“However we can still deliver a really great Festival and are focusing supporting the local economy and community even more in 2019.”
Festival week will run from June 15 to 23, with the park event now being on the opening weekend, June 15-16, rather than the climax of the seven-day celebration of music, dance, poetry and performance.
According to the Festival’s announcement, “Our Crystal Palace Park event will be held in the Jubilee Gardens (next to the bus station) and will be quite a bit smaller than usual, but perfectly formed of course. And there will be two days so we can’t say fairer than that!”
The Festival will reach out into the Crystal Palace community this summer. “We want to bring the high street to life with strolling players and lively buskers and we will work with our lovely local traders to sprinkle festival fairy dust all around.
“Each year we bring the Festival out to those who can’t come to parks and pubs and to invite groups of old and young to join in and perform working with fantastic partners such as London Mozart Players, Grounded Movement and the Dulwich Picture Gallery. We hope to do more of that really important work in 2019 and will be sharing more on those projects soon.”
Anyone wanting to volunteer their time or expertise to help with the staging of the Festival this year are encouraged to get in touch at info@crystalpalacefestival.org, or to visit the website by clicking here.
Further details of the Festival’s line-up and events are due to be announced in the coming weeks.
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