Announcing: Wray Crescent Festival, July 25

We’re thrilled to announce the return of the Wray Crescent Festival in Wray Crescent Park on July 25.

The fun start at noon and ends at 6pm, and we’ve got loads of great entertainment, stalls, and more to bring you this year – all we ask is that people please, please make a donation to help pay for it all!

Check back here regularly to learn more as we’ll be sharing fresh information about acts, diversions, and entertainment almost every day before the event takes place.

UPDATE: The running order is now available – scroll to the bottom of the page.

What you can look forward to

Live at the N19 Stage and Bar: Brilliant local musicians and a chance to buy a drink to enjoy while the kids race around the festival. Sit down, chill out, and enjoy the sounds.

Featured artists include (line-up subject to order change, music starts at 2pm).

Take Two, 2-2:30

Take Two is a jazz duo (guitar and vocals) who perform a blend of jazz, soul, and pop. They’ll take you on a musical tour through some of the world’s best tracks, from playful Latin dance to Nina Simone and Ray Charles.

Mehmet Raif, 2:40-3:10

His music is an instrumental fusion, combining guitar with global and ambient elements

Driss B Khalis, 3:15-3:45

Driss B Khalis brings his atmospheric, emotive sound to the N19 stage. “Life’s weird, so I write songs about it,” he says.

Adam and Tim, 3:50-4:20

Just two really talented singer/songwriters.

Hell’s Bees, 4:25-5

On-stage at the N19 bar look forward to the welcome return of Hell’s Bees – as seen at the Big Buzz! Hell’s Bees promise a rich mix of pop, soul, and Americana: expect cult cuts, familiar hits, and long-lost classics.

Zoe Maia 5:05-5:35

She’s a singer-songwriter and musician known for her dreamy indie-pop, folk-pop, and soulful original tracks

Raffle at about 5:35

Who wins the fantastic prizes from the raffle? Find out at 5pm.

First at the stage area look forward to African drum and dance workshops with Amberliegh, a community-based charity dedicated to empowering children and young people through creative arts and cultural programmes. 

They’ll host drum workshops from 12:30pm culminating in a fantastic, high-energy drum and dance show, followed by a simply fantastic aerial performance at 1:45pm we think you’ll love.

Telling stories

During the day you’ll find our super, amazing, mesmerising storyteller, Emily from Dragonfly Tales – you really, really must listen to her incredible storytelling podcast, we think you – and your kids – will love it. She’ll tell stories four times during the day.

Stilts circus, and dance

Yes, our wonderful stilt walker is back to walk tall among us. She’s bought along her friend, Jemma, the amazing lollipop aerialist, one of the best performers in the country.

Expect gravity-defying acrobatics, elegant aerial performances and a whole lot of fun, alongside our vibrant stilt walker who’ll be roaming the event, meeting guests, posing for photos and spreading smiles wherever they go. We can’t wait to help make this summer’s celebrations even bigger and better!

You can also look forward to fantastic clowning during the day with Nutmeg the clown and our wonderful Nick Putz racing around the show to share fab, fun, clown-vibes!

You may have seen Nutmeg perform at the Big Day out in Whittington Park a few weeks ago.

We know you wanted more, and we have more – you can also get into wonderful dance with Dance Stables.

Sports and games with Sports School.

Punch & Judy – there will be two performances during the day – don’t miss them, they take place at 12 noon and 2pm. We know how much people enjoy them, so don’t miss out.

Coconut Shy – pay your money, win a prize, and buy one of our classic N4 mugs! You’ll find lots of other classic and fairground games across the site.

and a Bouncy Castle – the Wray Crescent festival always has a bouncy castle your kids can enjoy, so don’t miss out.

Also featuring

Food

You want to eat? We know you do, and we’ve got you covered, we’re offering delicious Vegan and West Indian foods from Pickle Pockle and Masters Home Touch and fabulous coffee from Antonio.

Want to go shopping?

Be ready to explore out splendid collection of lovely gift stalls including fabulous art, crafts, honey, aromatherapy and much, much, more from local makers and artisans.

There are so many unique items, we think you’ll want them all, and if the whole event simply gets too much for you there’s even a meditation zone!

You want more? We’ve got even more – look out for random live acoustic performances from our very own Ukulele Orchestra and fabulous Ceilidh band, The Occasionals.

Also don’t miss four chances to hear fabulous stories in that part of the event with Dragonfly.

We’re really delighted our local football team has donated an incredibly collectible used Arsenal training kit as worn by Riccardo Calafiori (33), which fans will have a chance to win in our raffle.

We also have a super £50 voucher from brilliant Crouch End baker, Dunns.

Other great prizes include:

• £20 Front Room voucher
• Wine tasting at Oak
• 2 pairs of tickets to Top Secret Comedy Club
• £50 gift voucher from Tollingtons
• A lovely prize from Osterio Tufo
• And a lovely prize from Common Ground
• A one month membership for Hello Yoga Studio.
• Butlers gift basket
• £45voucher for Holuhaflow Therapies.
• 3x£10 Hidens voucher
• From Rowans, one bowling lane for one hour for up to six people during the week.
• Top price tickets for Matthew Bourne’s The Car Man performance at Sadler’s Wells, Angel, on Wednesday August 11 at 7:30pm

More prizes are being offered by our fantastic local businesses – we’ll announce them as soon as we can.

We’re so grateful to all the local businesses who help keep our event alive with their raffle prizes. Their contribution can’t be underestimated, as with your donations and their contributions the raffle quite literally keeps the festival going. It’s so, so nice to think that our local businesses are ready to step up support our local event. We can’t thank them all enough. Thanks again to everyone who contributed prizes last year.

You can only get tickets to win this year’s fantastic prizes at the festival on the day. Winners will be announced at about 5pm.

It’s quite a raffle – but we’re not done yet…

We have even more to tell you about

As well as everything above we also have amazing face painting from the hardest-working facial creatives we know.

The wonderful people from Cycle Islington will be there with Doctor Bike who will help you fix, maintain, and safely ride your bike. Tollington’s neighbourhood safety team will also be there and can register your bike for extra security.

We welcome Bobby Bubbles once again, who will delight us all with his amazing bubble performances.

Find out more about the local area with the Wray Crescent History Exhibition

Want more? Yes, there’s even more

Islington’s Income Maximisation Team will be on site to help you with your questions, along with other council teams..

We’ll be hosting lots of community groups, including people from Manor Gardens, and other local parks – look around, you’ll find over 20 stalls and about 20 entertainments to delight you, all for free, and all in your local park, starting prompt at midday – don’t miss out!

Make space in your diaries to visit this year’s festival, made for you by volunteers from the Friends of Wray Crescent. Every year we try to make the festival better and better, but we depend on your donations to make it happen.

With that in mind,

Please, please, PLEASE dig deep and donate to help pay for the event.

Please, please also help promote the festival– share this webpage with your friends, or make use of some of the images below.

And please, if you’d like to entertain us all, host a stall, help distribute leaflets or just help out on the day, do get in touch – we need all the help we can get!

We can’t wait to see you at the show on July 25

With Love

Friends of Wray Crescent

Here’s the poster – the running order is at the bottom of the page, keep scrolling!

Festival Running Order

All day around the site

• Walkabout entertainment with circus entertainer, Nick Putz
• Face Painting
• Bobby Bubbles balloon artistry 
• Stalls, food, bar – and Raffle.

Please support the festival, donate generously and buy raffle tickets to win fantastic prizes donated by local businesses.

——————————————————–

N19 stage from 2-6

2-2:30  Take Two

2:40-3:10           Mehmet

3:15-3:45           Driss

3:50-4:20           Adam and Tim

4:25-5  Hells Bees

5:05                    Zoe Maia

5:30                    Raffle

——————————————————–

Everywhere else

12:00 

Punch and Judy

12:15

Ceilidh at the Stalls stage (acoustic)

12:30-1:30 

Amberleigh drum workshop and dance at the main stage area

1:15-1:45

Follow the stilts!

1:30

Story telling at the stalls stage with Emily from Dragonfly Tales.

1:45

Aerialist Performance

2:00 

Punch and Judy

2:30

Stilts return

2:30 

Story telling at the stalls stage with Emily from Dragonfly Tales.

2:15-3:45

Sports with Sports School

3:00pm

Ukulele at the Stalls stage (acoustic0

3:30pm

Aerialist Performance 

4:00pm

Story telling at the stalls stage with Emily from Dragonfly Tales.

4:30pm

Nutmeg the clown

4:45

Aerialist Performance

5pm

Story telling at the stalls stage with Emily from Dragonfly Tales.

Join us!

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