3. Crystal Palace: Overground Festival
Festival season may be getting underway in Glastonbury this weekend, but you won’t have to travel to far for fun as there’s a festival right here in south London offering its own feast of unique entertainment.
The Overground Festival kicked off yesterday and continues until Sunday. Now in its seventh year, the event will once again be showing off Crystal Palace’s arts and culture. Alongside the tea dance, the open-air cinema in Cooper’s Yard, club classics on the dancefloor at Twenty-Five and bingo, you can also check out some history, with a celebration of The Great Exhibition hosted by LAStheatre. To celebrate Crystal Palace’s golden age, you are invited to “loosen your corset and twiddle that moustache” while poets, oddities and bands entertain in this whimsical Victorian wonderland. Or jump forward half a century, to Westow House’s 1950s rock ‘n’ roll extravaganza, after fine dining on Guinness and oysters at the Gipsy Hill Tavern. There’s also a kids’ zone by the Church Road entrance to the park with a circus and activities like hulahooping, football and storytelling to keep them busy, while parents can de-stress in the holistic area.
As our recent guide to Crystal Palace pointed out, the area has a bit of an unfair reputation as an awkward destination. It’s not! (There’s the 3, 432 and 363 buses for starters, and it’s just 20 minutes from London Bridge by train. No excuses!
Words: Michael D Hogan
The Overground Festival, runs from Thursday 27th – Sunday 30th June in various venues around Crystal Palace. For the latest updates, follow the action at @se19festival
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