Sustainable art exhibitions, live music, daring theatre and wellbeing workshops: the seventh annual Peckham Festival runs from September 16 – 18 and it’s yours to enjoy for free.
A celebration of the people, places and creativity of SE15, the not-for-profit community festival once again makes Copeland Park and Peckham Levels its primary hubs, while spilling over into bars, studios and community spaces across the neighbourhood.
Established in 2016 by Tim Wilson and Jordana Leighton, Peckham Festival aims to unite the area’s diverse, multi-generational community through a shared celebration of the arts. Over 100 artists are contributing to the weekend-long festival, which expects to attract up to 20,000 visitors.
Make a day of it and you could listen in on talks by local charities, catch a sustainability-focused exhibition, join a hip hop yoga class, take part in a sustainable fashion workshop, dance to live music, laugh along to live comedy and tuck into some street food once you’re truly exhausted and in need of refuelling.
Summarising the event, Peckham Festival director Jules Hill says: “It is a wonderful opportunity for both the local community to come together and also to bring business and footfall to Peckham off the back of the pandemic.”
So, what to look out for at this year’s festival?
The programme
The Community Hub
Affectionately known as the heartbeat of the festival, the Community Hub at Peckham Levels is where a smörgåsbord of over 30 local businesses and community groups including The Sisterhood Supper Club and Voices for Autism will congregate, ready to tell visitors about their work. Here, you can also get involved with free activities and workshops, including hip hop yoga and pilates.
Made in Peckham
Taking place in homes and open studios across Peckham, this wing of the festival is the chance
to discover (and buy!) the works of over 100
local artists.
Festival Stage
Copeland Park is the festival’s main hub of live music. Hear sets from community groups including Kinetika Bloco, Nunhead Community Choir, South London Youth Theatre, Theatre Peckham, Peckham Chamber Orchestra and Rye Lane Chapel Gospel Reggae, plus a special performance from south London-based marimba band Otto & The Mutapa Calling. Local DJs, drag acts and spoken word artists are also performing.
Sustainability programme
Sustainability is front of mind at this year’s festival. Catch a bicycle-powered film screening at Copeland Park, courtesy of Peckham-based Electric Pedals, or head inside Copeland Gallery, where a sustainable art exhibition Life After Life, curated by local artist Katrina Adams, features works made from repurposed materials and questions the role art can play in the future of the climate crisis.
Street Market
Hungry? Copeland Park has you covered. Here, local traders including The Fat Crust pizza and The Vegan Rasta are dishing up their goods.
Pubs and bars
Those for whom a good festival involves having a drink in hand at all times are also being looked after. Gosnell’s Mead Garden is trading at the festival, teaching visitors about their bee-friendly mead. At gamers’ paradise Four Quarters Bar, over 15s can make the most of free DJing workshops, while at rooftop bar Skylight, you’ll find a comedy night, Sunday drag brunch and live music. Hipster favourite Prince of Peckham is getting involved too, with an art installation and more live music.
Theatre
At the Lost Text Found Space, you can make your imprint on the festival through contributing to a durational installation overseen by Green Means Theatre and designer-cum-poet Hannah Harding.
At Grade II-listed venue Asylum, writer-director Amanda Douge presents a climate-focused theatre production St.Joan/Greta (September 15 & 16, 6pm), in which Greta Thunberg and Joan of Arc are united on stage. Then don’t miss the chance to hear from the change-makers of tomorrow, as These Are Rituals shines a light on the challenges, hopes and frustrations faced by teens from minority backgrounds today.
With so much to see and take part in over the festival’s three-day run, Jules has two approaches for first-timers hoping to make the most of it.
“My advice would be to have a look at what’s on in order to get the most out of the festival experience, however it is also fun to just turn up and see what you stumble across,” she says. Above all, she hopes to offer “a warm-hearted community experience for everyone, [and] an insight into the world of our local artists and creatives”.
So throw yourself into taster workshops, interact with charities and community organisations, sample local street food, listen to live sets from a mix of emerging and established artists, and celebrate the creativity of SE15.
Peckham Festival is taking place at Copeland Park and Peckham Levels, with further events held at Bussey Building, Social, Jumbi, Peckham Market, Skylight, Four Quarters, Peckham Audio, John The Unicorn, The Prince of Peckham, Ivy House and The Arches Studios.
September 16 – 18, times vary.
Admission: FREE.
www.peckhamfestival.org/
This article was brought to you from The South Londoner
