The Crouch End Festival: a celebration of local talent

The Crouch End Festival looks like it’s shaping up to be a great event. Last week I met with James Bridgman, one of the festival organisers, to find out more.

London localism seems to be finding an expression in festival form of late. Harringay has had two Food Festivals and last year the Caledonian Road followed suit and ran their first festival. Now this year N21 are shaping up to host their version and the Crouch End Festival will be running from May 4th to 13th.

Whilst community is a common thread, inevitably each festival says something about the area hosting it, more likely by design than by accident. The Harringay bash is all about ‘entertainment’ with food and music as core themes. It's been organised with huge amounts of selfless input mainly by people drawn formally constituted groups and orchestrated by a council run group. (A hat tip here to Rob Chau of the Harringay Traders’ Association and Andy Newman of the Gardens Residents Association).

The Crouch End Festival has a very different vibe. Scheduled to dovetail with Crouch End Open Studios the following weekend, it’s been designed as part a two week celebration of local talent and is being organised by a network of locals. The group networked themselves together on Facebook last year and are using networked self-organisation to make things happen. Although nothing’s done without a certain amount of hard graft, the Crouch End group appear to be lightening their load very successfully by organising it along something rather akin to world café principles. Crouch End hosted one of the world’s first unlibraries; dare I venture to call this an unfestival?

It all started back in October 2008 when Crouch End local Chris Arnold set up the Crouch End Creatives Facebook group. Although the group saw little activity to begin with, in April last year  the group sprang to life:

Chris J Arnold We have an ambitious plan. To reposition (brand) Crouch End as 'LONDON'S CREATIVE VILLAGE". What do people think?

A month later, James Bridgman replied:

James Bridgman could be a great idea - but we need a vehicle (event/hub etc) to focus on... can a few of us meet up and thrash this out face to face...?

And by the end of the day, the meeting was organised that would give birth to the festival.

Chris J Arnold I suggest 7pm at Coffee Circus on Friday 3rd. If too many turn up we can relocate to a pub (one next to Evans cycle shop is empty most night). Ya or Na?

Here’s how Chris reported back on the meeting via Facebook on June 4th:

Chris J Arnold Good meet up tonight. Lots of people from different arts backgrounds 0 music, writing, art, photography, cartooning, advertising... and more.

Plan is for another meet up end of June, probably in the Maynard this time - Fri 24th June.

We need to have hub. For social its this Facebook group, but we discussed asking an existing Crouch End website to act as one too.

We all agreed that we should aim to have a Crouch End Arts Festival next year. This gives us a purpose.

We need to sign up as many members of creative groups as possible, as well as identifying these groups. So ask your creative friends.

With some of the heavy lifting being done through established local networks and social media platforms, an organising group has been hard at work organiseing since that initial meeting.

Now that sponsorship is in place from Budgens, Martyn Gerard, the festival has the green light.  Driven by Chris Arnold’s vision of Crouch End as London’s Creative Capital, the aim is for the Festival to be a very local celebration of local creative talent. This means that the local celebrities of which Crouch End is not short, have by and large been spurned in favour of a more home grown feel.

So far there are 20 venues signed up to host exhibitions, shows and performances and James told me he expects more to come forward. Those included so far are in the main pubs, cafes and bars, but with some community venues joining in too.

The aspiration is to attract around 100 artists including craft artists, painters, photographers and filmmakers, musicians, performance artists etc. The list of those already signed up is growing steadily but if you’d like to take part there’s still room to accommodate more. To take part you need to be local. That means N8 and immediately surrounding areas.

James explained how the self-organising style of the festival is being extended to include planning which acts use which venues. “We’re running it almost as if we were hosting a speed-dating event. We’ll broker introductions between creatives and venue owners, then leave them to work out whether or not they want to date!”

Here are some of the events already in the pipeline:

• A crafts trail with stalls outside Budgens, Oddbins, Hornsey Library and possibly other venues
• School bands in the Greig City Academy car park (Contact the organisers if your school is interested).
• Budgens Rooftop (Food from the Sky) as a venue
• A burlesque show at the Music Palace
• A wool / sheep themed event in Stationer’s Park
• A stage for local bands in front of Hornsey Town Hall. (Although this has yet to be confirmed and appears to be the subject of some tricky negotiations).
• Moors Bar are also hosting events alongside the festival in keeping with the local theme.

Current thinking is that all the venues will be within the triangle formed roughly by the Great Northern Tavern, Victoria Stakes and the King’s Head (apologies for the pubcenricity - my fault, not James’s). But as James has explained this year is something of a try-out. Future years will no doubt see some reshaping and that may include flexing the current geographical boundaries.

By the way, I arranged to meet James at Café Moka and introduced him to owner Kevin Vanthem. Kevin is soon to start hosting an artists networking event on Wednesday evenings a the café. If that group were to want to go for a CEF Fringe event, why not!

Either way, the festival looks like another great local event. So thanks to the organisers. I’m looking forward to it.

Chris Arnold runs Ad agency Creative Orchestra

James Bridgman runs branding & design agency Silverleaf

CONTACTS

The Crouch End Festival site is at crouchendfestival.org.

The Crouch End Creatives Facebook group is at facebook.com/groups/crouchendcratives

Crouch End Open Studios are at crouchendopenstudios.co.uk