Croydon’s calendar year as London’s Borough of Culture has not quite finished, but its dubious legacy appears to be sealed in failure after not one but two established festivals announced that they won’t take place in 2024.
Money troubles: Croydon Pride and the Croydon Mela have both cancelled in 2024
Croydon Pride posted an announcement this morning stating “with regret” that it has cancelled this summer’s event “due to a lack of funding combined with ever-increasing costs”.
The Croydon Mela, a day of south Asian music, dance and colour, had already pulled the plug on its 2024 staging.
The cancellations of the inter-dependent events ought to raise serious questions of Mayor Jason Perry and the Mayor of London’s culture team over some of the decisions made for the Borough of Culture’s more dubious, art-less projects, with some events being given tens of thousands of pounds and never even taking place.
Pride and the Mela had shared staging costs, and a weekend, in Wandle Park last July, when both had the help of £60,000 each in grants through the Mayor of London’s Borough of Culture. This year, sources have confirmed, there is no funding for Pride from Croydon’s cash-strapped council.
Last year another annual arts festival in the borough, the Crystal Palace Overground Festival, was also cancelled, the organisers saying that they were having a year-long pause to re-think their approach to that event.
Pride’s organisers are promising to be back in 2025, while also “partnering with local venues to run a series of events in Croydon for Pride month this year”, they said.
Year’s end: today’s Croydon Pride announcement
“In the meantime, we’ll be working on addressing our funding and internal governance…
“We’ll be back in 2025 for a fabulous PrideFest,” the statement, issued by Paula Goodwin, Croydon Pride’s chair, said.
The 2023 Croydon Pridefest was the sixth time the event had been staged.
Apart from Croydon Council as headline sponsors, last year’s festival listed only two “gold” tier sponsors, Think Events (who handle much of the rigging and set-up for the Wandle Park festival weekend) and Fat Beehive, a company run by former Labour councillor Mark “Marcus” Watson, who is also a trustee of Croydon Pride.
Pride had planned to stage a fund-raising and sponsor-attracting event in the town centre earlier this month, with live music acts, but that was cancelled, too.
With London and Brighton both having large Pride marches and festivals, Croydon’s organisers find themselves in a crowded and increasing tough market for sponsors.
“It’s important that Croydon does have its own Pridefest,” a source told Inside Croydon today. “But to do that, we need to raise lots more money, and we also need more volunteers and trustees to come forward.”
Read more: How Croydon’s ‘Culture Club’ was turned into a business clique
Read more: £1.5m being spent on our Borough of not-very-much Culture
Read more: GLA has few checks on how £1.3m Culture grant is being spent
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What’s our well-paid Cabinet Member for Communities and Culture, Councillor Andy Stranack, got to say for himself?
Why can’t we try and put on one single event combining all the diversity into one great music day. Just one Croydon Music Festival with something for everyone. The small amount for funds available for each separate event might add up to enough for one for everyone to share.
What a brilliant, inclusive idea! Gets my vote. Sadly, it might not meet the ‘diversity requirements’ which I think requires visible, separate, events – Mela, Pride, Morris etc. And, yes I know everyone’s welcome at everything.
As the chair of a local charity that has been giving young people the opportunity to perform on stage for over 30 years, and is now on the point of folding due to lack of cast and funds. We were excited to hear that Croydon was the borough of culture, then very disappointed that all that meant was money spent on giraffe statues. If there is anyone out there who knows a young person (8-18) who is interested in singing, dancing and musical theatre and would like to know more please visit http://www.youngergeneration.uk
Maybe one or both could be crowd funded?
You would think that with all that has been saved on any kind of publicity…..
It’s coming up to 30 years since I was first elected as a local councillor in Croydon, aged 23. I has huge ambitions to serve the community I grew up in. And I am so proud of the role I played as cabinet member for culture between 1999 – 2003. That was the period where Croydon’s cultural offer was at its best. Having left Croydon 10 years ago to work in Manchester, with my life at a crossroads, I have a lot of time to think and reflect. I lost my love for politics when I was booted from the cabinet in 2003 – and I’ve never really spoken about it. My record can speak for itself, and I think it was pretty damn good. And it’s quite sad to see the state of Croydon now in terms of its cultural offer. I’m really tempted to come back to Croydon, once all my legal issues around my partner and his brain injury and the awful situation around the court of protection are resolved. Croydon deserves better than what it has now. I miss my hometown and of course I miss Selhurst Park and my beloved Crystal Palace too… and have fond memories of welcoming the likes of Nitin Sawhney, Eddi Reader and many others.