With a big welcome to families with children interested in practicing and learning street dance, live visual arts, graffiti, spoken word and more, Streetfest has been carefully curated with sessions and workshops to cater to the next generation of counterculture creative. Throughout the day children of all ages can take part in street art, manga and graffiti workshops as well as dance battles alongside award winning Bboy crew Soul Mavericks and Bgirl collective b.supreme. Hotly tipped DJs Chloëdees (NTS) and RBC (Wireless, Afropunk) will be on the decks. The festival’s top billing goes to counterculture iconics DJ Ron (Rinse FM) and Shortee Blitz (ITV2 Dont Hate The Playaz) catering to Hip hop and Jungle lovers.
StreetFest is the country’s premier street culture festival. Originally emerging from east London’s underground scene and now in its 11th year, StreetFest consistently champions the maverick artists and unsung heroes from the vibrant local creative community. This year, StreetFest takes it to the next level with a unique ‘Three City Festival Series’ kicking off in May with the hugely successful, inaugural StreetFest Leeds with DJ Semtex headlining, followed by StreetFest London on 14th September and StreetFest Liverpool in 2020, dates and details to be announced.
With a call-out to all budding poets and spoken word artists, StreetFest is proud to launch its first ‘Spoken word’ competition’ with Music Is Remedy, that offers a grand prize of an opportunity to perform at StreetFest and have a printed poem in the Spring 2020 edition of world-famous US publisher Trope. Send in your London themed poem and find out more by clicking on https://www.pistolphotography.com
There will also be a chance to buy the newly launched StreetFest Apparel and give back to the community through B1G1. StreetFest’s ‘Fresh apparel for the creative’ is now available at ASOS Marketplace and with the sale of each t-shirt, sweat-shirt and hoodie, a contribution will be made to life-changing, global projects through a new partnership with B1G1 (Buy1, Give1) ‘Business for Good’ initiative. StreetFest aims to support 500+ arts and education projects across the world so the more you buy the more StreetFest can make a difference!
Full highlights:
• Visual arts – curated by PaintFreaks and including local and internationally celebrated graffiti and street artists, illustrators and designers creating an immersive, colourful kaleidoscope of murals in and around the festival to create an immersive ‘Live arts moment’ which sees the collaboration of a huge array of artists, ranging from aerosol to illustrators and from fine art to stencil based artisans and digital to canvas. Artists include Nathan Bowen, Artista, Andy Seize, Code FC and Demograffix, children are welcome to join in the creating. • Spoken word competition – Music is Remedy in collaboration with award winning Chicago based publishers Trope are calling out to poets and spoken word artists who have a London tale to tell. • Music – Showcasing the best of London’s urban scene, StreetFest’s musical offering has always been hugely anticipated every year. Previous live artists have included Afrikan Boy, Stush, Goldie, Miss Dynamite, Loyle Carner, Oddisee, Professor Green, HUDSON, Wretch 32, Devlin, Maverick Sabre and Ghost Poet. This year there will be a mix of the capital’s best including the inimitable headline DJs DJ Ron and Shortee Blitz, alongside LyrcL, Chloëdees and RBC, hosted by MC Paz. • Street Dance – Open to children and adults, live dance workshops and battles curated by b.supreme, a non-profit organisation for women in hip hop now in its 7th year curating at StreetFest bring demos, competitions, battles and performances from the best of London’s dance scene. Featuring Soul Mavericks who will host a ‘Takeover’ featuring a battle between the Bgirls and Bboys, as well as DJ Dbo and Bgirl SunSun. • Manga & Graffiti workshops -– Specially designed workshops by Art House Project to teach children specialist skills in drawing ‘Manga’ characters and Graffiti lettering • Hand sprayed graffiti workshops – Re-worked Vintage run these workshops to teach kids and adults how to hand spray graffiti art onto items such as t-shirts, sweatshirts and hooded tops • Traders - The Treats Club https://www.instagram.com/thetreatsclub/, Caribbean Kitchen https://www.instagram.com/caribbeankitchenlondon/, Kam Creates https://www.kamcreates.com/
StreetFest founder, Bayo Alaba said “I’m proud to say that StreetFest is unapologetically the biggest champion of British street culture and this year we are focussing on nurturing the next generation of creatives, sharing our specialist skills and knowledge and handing it down. We are also proud to launch StreetFest Apparel and give back to our community with each item of apparel sold. Since we launched in 2008, StreetFest has provided a unique platform for the unsung heroes of our creative underbelly. We always push to raise the bar every year, and we are proud to launch our ‘Three City Festival Series’ to do even more to showcase incredible ‘under the radar’ talent, not just in London but across the north of England too. StreetFest has innovated and grown every year and it’s been truly exciting to take our maverick collective of creatives on the road to Leeds to start the summer, then home to east London in September, ending in Liverpool in 2020. StreetFest has a track record of taking place in some crazy locations, from car parks, to garages, warehouses and derelict wharfs. I can’t wait for our homecoming in east London, bringing together the capital’s incredibly talented urban arts community of all ages, expect a roadblock.”
Shortee Blitz added “I’m looking forward to taking it back to StreetFest’s roots in east London at the end of summer. Major respect to StreetFest for staying at the forefront of street culture for so many years, which is testament to tireless commitment. It’s a great honour to be headlining in London.”
EVENT INFO: StreetFest London: Saturday 14th September 2019, 2PM – 10PM, 29–32 The Oval, London E2 9DT, www.ovalspace.co.uk
