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Take a Beau! New director named for Purley Festival’s return

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After a five-year break, the Purley Festival is to return in 2022.

This happy Festival-goer could be a teen by the time the next Purley Festival is staged in 2022

Fiona Lipscombe, one of the directors of the Festival, made the announcement this week as she handed the baton over to local businessman Beau Williams.

“It is with great delight and excitement to announce that the original founders of Purley Festival have passed down the legacy of the Festival to the next generation,” Lipscombe said.

Williams runs a tech business and has worked as a DJ. He is described as having a lot of experience putting on events and in the music industry.

In previous years, the festival would usually finish with a weekend fair in Rotary Fields featuring a main stage with a collection of music acts.

The Purley Festival was first staged in 2011. In 2015, the organisers made comparisons between their event and Glastonbury, claiming 10,000 attendees were “dazzled” over the final weekend, when the star turn was… Shakatak. That was the first year that the Festival paid for professional acts.

But the organisers pulled the plug on their 2016 event and the Purley Festival was last staged in 2017.

The Community Interest Company which ran the festival was dissolved in 2019, with current assets listed at £10,352, of which £8,768 was due to creditors, leaving £1,584, according to Companies House records.

The Purley Festival has been missing from the local calendars since 2017

Given the impact of coronavirus over the past 12 months and the collapse of the council’s finances – meaning that there will likely be no help from the Town Hall – Williams and his largely new team of volunteers will be facing a formidable task as they work towards staging the renamed “Purley Festival ReCr8”.

“Beau and his team will be putting their own twist on the well-loved and much-missed annual event but remains as a community festival with the same high standards of performance, production, safety and atmosphere that you’ve come to expect,” Lipscombe said.

“Polish off your dancing shoes and get those moves ready for next year!”


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