About

Thamesmead Festival returns to the iconic urban setting of Southmere Park, bringing together residents and visitors alike for a free celebration of all things Thamesmead. Organised by local people and with a programme packed full of home-grown talent, the day features live music, dance, performance, food and family activities as well as the much-anticipated annual dog show. 

Acts include; south London-raised singer Samm Henshaw and Britain’s Got Talent champions Twist and Pulse, this year’s event will see the return of its three main stages – the Park Stage, up on the hill; the Southmere Stage on Southmere Square and the more informal Unplugged Stage among the trees in Southmere Park – showcasing music, spoken word, dance, magic and comedy.

The festival is programmed and led by the Festival Production Group, a committee of 14 residents representative of Thamesmead’s diverse cultures and neighbourhoods. Together with acclaimed cultural event producers Serious, they are working to deliver an ambitious showcase of local talent, having issued an open call that will serve as the basis for selecting the full line-up, scheduled to be announced later in the summer. The group is: Manny Adeneye, Samuel Aribisala, Joanne Bernard, Adedapo Dalley, Deborah Frimpong, Jules, Carolyn Long, Whitney Manassian, Pastor Bunmi Omidiran, Anne Poole, Ian Tyson, Jerusha Ujanga, Kim Vale and Jamie Zubairi.

As part of a stellar line-up of talent, the festival will welcome back Thamesmead-based street dance group Dynamix for a special performance and Greenwich Dance, who recently relocated to The Nest community building, for their debut festival appearance. Vitally expressing the ethos and background of the Festival Production Group, dance forms an integral element of the programme, a medium through which many young people in the community have been able to tell their stories, with globally renowned Thamesmead-raised rapper ENNY recently describing how joining a local street dance group at just seven years of age helped shape an early interest in music.

The festival will also feature community stalls run by local groups and charities, providing information about their work in the community, free workshops and activities for children and adults, and a mouth-watering menu of food and drink from across the world. This year’s offering includes Peter’s Panas serving the best Venezualan gluten-free arepas in London, tasty Jamaican eats from The Caribbean Hut, Nigerian cuisine from Yeti’s Authentic Kitchen and Bexley Mixology providing a refreshing selection of handcrafted mocktails. Other stalls include hand blended holistic pink Himalayan salt products from Pink Salt UK, Cool-Caricatures by local artist Femi and Deluxe Bubbles, selling bath bombs, soaps, scrubs and balms fit to pamper a king.

As part of the day, a spectacular 25m high hot air balloon tapestried with stories from Thamesmead will be inflated and tethered on the festival site. The winning proposal for the Thamesmead Open competition, Fields of EveryWhen is a collaborative artwork by artists Neil Musson and Jono Retallick and the Thamesmead community. Created over the last two years, it weaves together stories by and about the people and places of Thamesmead, which have been converted into embroideries, textile collages and illustrations, then digitally enlarged onto the fabric of the hot air balloon to form a ‘floating gallery’ celebrating Thamesmead’s rich history, community and creative talent.