New Cross Party in the Park 2016

Tomorrow (Saturday 3rd September) sees the New Cross Party in the Park returning to Fordham Park, a free community festival 'for all ages, with family events, arts and crafts, stalls, spoken word, as well as local bands and acts for all tastes from disco to reggae, punk rock, soul and folk'.

 

The party follows on from previous events in 2013 and 2014 (see report here), and traces its origins back to the legendary Deptford Urban Free Festivals held in the park in the 1990s. Remember seeing RDF  (Radical Dance Faction) back there then and they are playing tomorrow. 

 

New Cross Party in the Park

The 1990s Urban Free Festival in Fordham Park was a major London event, bringing together people from what at the time was a big free party/squat/punk/rave scene. 20 years later (13 September), similar sounds were to be heard in the same place at the  Party in the Park - including Back to the Planet who were on the bill there in 1992. Quite a few of the people organising sound systems etc. were also veterans from that scene, as were some of the crowd.  But there were also lots of new young bands in the event organised by New Cross Learning, the Madcap Coalition and others.

Unlike last year's Party in the Park which was cursed by bad weather, this year it was sunny enough to bring out what may well have been the biggest crowd in the park since the final Urban  Free festival in 1995 - nothing like on the scale of  that event, which attracted about 30,000 people in very different times, but a decent free community festival.

Shocks of Mighty

Siren Sound System

Step 13 on the Siren stage by the Moonshot - great breakbeat anthems