The summer
round of Festivals in Croydon has started: Purley’s on Monday night, Crystal Palace and South
Norwood Arts on Thursday with the later running through to 14 July, and the annual
Folk and Blues Festival on Saturday 13 July at Ruskin House.
Croydon’s community
activists are showing that positive cultural activity can be organised regardless
of what the ruling Tory Group decides on the future of Fairfield Halls, the sale of Riesco collection items, the closure of the David Lean Cinema and the
shafting of the Warehouse Theatre.
Monterey Pop Film Show
On Monday
night I was in the 100+ audience for the film Monterey Pop (1968) of the festival held in 1967, shown by the Save
the David Lean Cinema Campaign as the evening launch event of the Purley Festival.
It certainly
brought back memories. Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix still have the same effect
as they did when I first heard them in
the 60s; Simon & Garfunkel – what can one say?; Otis Reading - what a
performer; Ravi Shankar – brilliant. The Animals, whose version of The House of the Rising Sun remains for
me one of the best songs from 1964-5, sang the Rolling Stones’ Paint it Black.
Organising a
film show requires a lot of time and effort. So imagine how much has to go into
the organisation of Festivals. The costs, the health and safety and licensing
requirements are a nightmare by themselves. But have a look at the programme
for the Purley music events on Saturday 29 and Sunday 30, ensuring there is a
packed line-up of acts, the staging, sound systems, the food, the organisations
stalls, and the children’s activities.
Lambeth Riverside Festivals 2005 & 2006
The budgets
required are large. I know from experience. In 2003 the Vauxhall Festival had
money thrown at it, and an ambitious programme was mounted. In 2004 – no money,
so Lady Margaret Hall Settlement put on
a scratch programme just to keep the Festival alive. Then in 2005 and 2006 as
worker for Riverside Community Development Trust it was my job to co-ordinate
the Festival re-named ‘Lambeth Riverside’. The programme was constructed
largely the efforts of local residents
and organisations putting together a varied programme across two weeks and
three weekends. I also arranged the publicity. This was all done on a small central
budget or paid for out of their own funds. There was no money for an open-air
weekend music event.
Attendances in
2005 were marred by the bombings of 7 July, the day before the opening event, as people
felt it was safest to stay indoors. I launched my first History & Social
Action Publications title, the story Mother
Seacole by Jason Young, during the
Festival. The budget for 2006 was even smaller. With the help of students on
placement I was able to produce a display on aspects of the musical life of
Lambeth since the 17thC.
For both
years I organised talks by Professor Penny Corfield on Vauxhall Pleasure
Gardens. These were turned into Vauxhall.
The Invention of the Urban Pleasure Gardens, published specially for the
international Conference on the Gardens held at Tate Britain in 2008. A second revised edition was published last
year Vauxhall. Sex and Entertianment.
Wandsworth Heritage Festival
As a member
of the Heritage Wandsworth Partnership I know how much effort has gone into the
planning of the annual Heritage Festival since 2009, although this year I did
not organise any talks or walks. I
opened the 2009 Festival with a talk on Edwardian rolling skating, in which musical accompaniment played an
important role. Leisure and sporting activities are of course part of cultural
life.
I also published another History & Social Action Publication Battersea’s Global Reach. The story of Price’s
Candles by Jon Newman (Lambeth Archives). One of the talks I gave in the 2010
Festival was on aspects of the history of musical life in Wandsworth.
Croydon Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Festival
Last year
saw the Croydon Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Festival master-minded by Jonathan Butcher,
as Artistic Director, with the support of the members of Surrey Opera. A year
long Festival with a tiny budget. My role was simply to keep up a stream of
publicity going out through the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Network which I
co-ordinate. I set the Network up with Jeff Green, the composer’s biographer
and Fred Scott, a Croydon piano teacher and director of the Soundpractice
agency. Acting on my suggestions Fred
encouraged two teenage girls pianists to compose and perform a duet based on a
theme by the composer, while a male teenager to improvise another in jazz
style. I also published Jeff Green’s Coleridge-Taylor.
A Centenary Celebration. I administer a small fund for my mother, a former
piano teacher, which helps pay the costs of young pianists in Croydon from low
income families to take part of the annual Soundpractice summer school.
Other Cultural Activity
My other
forays into cultural activity have included being historical adviser to a
Durham County youth theatre group for a play they wrote on slavery and
abolition, and to Kennington based Alford House youth centre’s HLF project looking
at the influence of black American youth culture in Britain. I have researched,
spoken and published on the career of Paul Robeson in politics and culture in
Britain. I have carried out research into black actors and themes in theatre
for the Trading Faces project.
Black Music in Britain 1900-1920
Currently I
am the historical adviser on Coleridge-Taylor in the Nubian Jak Community Trust’s
London Schools Remembrance Project looking at the influence of black music in
Britain between 1900 and 1920, based on Coleridge-Taylor and the Southern Syncopated
Orchestra which helped to introduce jazz from the United States. This has
involved me in running workshops in a primary and a secondary school. I talk
about this as a panel member in the one of the panels at the 1 June launch of
the British Black Music Unit at the University of Westminster, whose staff
include Mykaell Riley, formerly of the reggae group Steel Pulse. I continue to
promote the Network. e.g. on my history stalls at the Croydon Heritage Festival
event on 8 June, at the forthcoming Wandle Park Revival Day on 6 July, and at
the Folk & Blues Festival. I am also speaking about the composer in the
South Norwood Arts Festival programme on 5 July.
Wide Range of Skills Needed To Organise and Promote Cultural Activities
I have no musical,
literary or artistic ability. So as you can see from what I have done, you do
not need to have any such ability to play a role in promoting cultural
activities. Whether you see their value from a community building, development
and cohesion perspective, or are just as an enthusiast, everyone can contribute
to further enriching the wide range of cultural life of their local area. They
can be part of building and sharing
cultural knowledge and understanding. Cultural organisations and programmes need
organisers, information disseminators and generators of ideas.
Tara Green
has written a piece in Croydon Citizen
about the crucial role of volunteers in putting on the Purley Festival. You may
have all kinds of skills that are needed by Festival and cultural event
organisers. Have you considered what you can offer?
If Festivals and cultural events are seen as
building local communities, then ways need to be found to introduce people to
those they do not know. Otherwise people just turn up as individuals or as a
group of friends of family, and do not get the meet anyone one else in the
area. How this can be done presents a real challenge. The minimum is people who
meet and greet to make people feel welcome for coming.
Purley
Festival. www.purleyfestival.co.uk
Crystal
Palace Festival. http://crystalpalacefestival.org
South
Norwood Arts Festival: www.peopleforportlandroad.org.uk/images/snaf_programme_2013.pdf
Folk and
Blues Festival. www.folkandblues.org
Trading Faces website. Currently off-line.
Black Music Research
Unit. www.westminster.ac.uk/research/a-z/camri/black-music-research-unit
Tara Green. Kudos to the community: the Purley Festival
is here! http://thecroydoncitizen.com/culture/kudos-to-the-community-the-purley-festival-is-here
