3 minute read
Bedford Park Festival
Torin Douglas celebrates the return of Green Days
Green Days weekend is back on June 11th and 12th - and people in Bedford Park can’t wait for its return, as a highlight of the Chiswick calendar and its longest-established community event. After two years’ absence because of COVID, an array of marquees, gazebos, funfair rides and refreshments stalls will spring up opposite St Michael & All Angels Church and Turnham Green tube station for two days of fun, food and friendship – supported by local people and businesses, in aid of charities. The Green (called Acton Green, confusingly, not Turnham Green), will be taken over by families, musicians, young footballers and children in fancy dress, for the opening weekend of ‘Chiswick’s favourite fortnight’, the Bedford Park Festival. The Green Days Fete & Craft Fair attracts thousands of people with its stalls, children’s corner, 5-a-side football and skittles - not to mention the music performances, refreshments and beer tents, Win-A-Meal competition, tombola, books, bric-a-brac, cakes and an open air church service. Green Days is just the start of a fortnight of arts and community events held in and around St Michael & All Angels Church, which runs the Festival in the world’s first garden suburb. On Friday June 10th there’s an Organ Recital in the church and the Preview Party for the Bedford Park Summer Art Exhibition and the Photography Exhibition, which continue across the opening weekend. On Monday June 13th, the birthday of WB Yeats, it’s the annual poetry evening with Cahal Dallat, leader of the artwork project to celebrate Yeats’ formative years in Bedford Park, hosted by AnneMarie Fyfe, former chair of the Poetry Society. On Wednesday June 15th, Theo Fennell, the celebrated jeweller (and father of Oscar-winner Emerald Fennell) will talk about his hilarious new memoir, I Fear for This Boy: Some Chapters of Accidents, in conversation with writer Kathy Lette. And on Friday 17th, Gerard Logan will perform Hauntings, an evening of three tales of the supernatural from the great ghost-story writers, EF Benson and MR James. In the second week, there is a range of concerts and other
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music events including Jazz On A Summer’s Night, with The Denis Smith Trio and vocalist Vanessa Rose on Saturday 18th; St Michael’s Choristers on Sunday 19th; Musique du temps perdu with David Juritz, Milly Forrest and David Gordon on Wednesday 22nd; a piano recital by Mark Viner on Thursday 23rd; a Gilbert & Sullivan singalong on Friday 23rd; and the London Welsh Rugby Choir on Saturday 24th. There are several events marking the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. As a curtain-raiser, on the afternoon of Saturday June 4th, there’s The Big Jubilee Sing: 70 Years of Songs hosted by Bedford Park’s church, St Michael & All Angels, and pub, The Tabard. The following Saturday, June 11th, the Queen’s Jubilee is the theme of the Children’s Fancy Dress competition and there’s a ‘Cake Fit For A Queen’ competition at the Refreshments Tent. The week after that, June 18th, there’s a Children’s Jubilee Biscuit Decorating Competition. There are also the perennial Festival favourites – the Artists At Home open studios event from June 17th to 19th; the Bedford Park Walk on Saturday June 25th; the Festival Mass on Sunday June 26th and the Bedford Park Open Gardens that afternoon, bringing the Festival to its traditional close. Tickets are now on sale for all the events, and the full programme can be read, at www.bedfordparkfestival.org. The first Bedford Park Festival took place in 1967 – launched by the then vicar of St Michael & All Angels to foster a sense of community, celebrate the arts, and raise money for repairs to the Church. With the support of the Bedford Park Society and under the patronage of Sir John Betjeman, it helped save the area from developers, leading to its current status as a conservation area. Since then the Festival has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for charities, with the support of local people and businesses. This year it will again raise money for the church and its chosen charities: The Upper Room, which feeds and support the community in need in West London; West London Welcome, a free drop-in centre for refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants, and Swinfen Telemedicine, which uses digital technology to bring specialist medical expertise to doctors and nurses working in remote regions of the world.
