123-year-old carnival set to return to park after cancellation last year

By Robert Firth, Local Democracy Reporter

A 123-year-old carnival cancelled last year because a council slashed its funding by almost 90 per cent is set to return, after organisers of a dance music festival agreed to lend it stages for free.

Bermondsey Carnival is expected to return to Southwark Park on August 6, a year after its organiser Russell Dryden had to cancel the 2022 edition of the event due to a lack of cash.

Assemble Gala Limited, the team behind Peckham Rye’s yearly Gala music festival, has agreed to lend equipment to Mr Dryden so that this year’s edition of the carnival can go ahead. Assemble GALA is also covering the site costs of the carnival.

The plans were revealed at a Southwark council licensing meeting today where the council gave permission for Assemble GALA to hold events in Southwark Park over August 5 and August 6.

Under the agreed proposals, Assemble Gala’s new music and arts festival, Rally, would take place in the park on August 5.

Stages would then be quickly rearranged and a children’s funfair brought on site in time for the carnival to take over the park the following day.

The arrangements still rely on Bermondsey Carnival attracting enough sponsorship for the event to go ahead.

Southwark council has previously handed the carnival’s organiser £80,000 to cover the costs but since last year only £10,000 has been available from the local authority.

Robert Dudley, Assemble Gala Limited’s agent, distanced the festival from controversy surrounding noise nuisance from other music events previously held at the park.

He told the meeting: “The noise issue that the objector references seems to talk about is the historical Korean pop concert events that have taken place in Southwark Park.

“That’s an entirely different event, different organiser and took place in a different area of the park. We’re talking about the northern section of the park and as I understand it those concerts were in the south so we’ve got an entirely different event layout.”

He added: “We’ve provided a noise management plan. The noise management team we use are the same team who manage acoustics at Gala Festival so they’ve got a great deal of experience of working with Southwark’s environmental protection team.”

Mr Dudley said that around 3,000 letters had been sent to local residents giving them advanced notice of the festival.

Just short of 10,000 people will be able to attend events at the park on each of the two festival dates set for 2023.

Under the conditions of the licence granted, performances will be able to take place until 10.30pm, Thursday until Saturday and on Sundays before bank holidays going forward.

Assemble Gala Limited will be able to run events on up to three consecutive days at the park every year until 2025.

Pictured top: Southwark Park in Bermondsey (Picture: Google Street View)