Walthamstow Garden Party

The Barbican and Create London are working in partnership with Waltham Forest Council to present the Walthamstow Garden Party, a free weekend of music, theatre, arts and crafts, food and family activities in Walthamstow’s Lloyd Park.

Walthamstow Garden Party will celebrate Waltham Forest’s creative and cultural communities and forms part of the Council’s Get Together summer events programme and the Beyond Barbican summer season. It will make full use of the spaces and landscape of Lloyd Park - home to the award winning William Morris Gallery - and be inspired by the principles of William Morris, the radical Victorian craftsman who called Walthamstow home.

The festival’s two music stages will feature international and local artists. Performers on Saturday 26 July include all-singing, all-strumming group The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain; psychedelic cumbias from NYC-based Chicha Libre; local community musicians Walthamstow Acoustic Massive; Jaipur Kawa Brass Band romping their way through the joyous world of Indian brass from Rajasthani folk to Bollywood and beyond; Tamburitza string band Söndörg? playing a fascinating range of Hungarian folk drawn from the Southern Slavic traditions; and Debademba, a duo hailing from Burkino Faso and Mali.

Artists performing on Sunday 27 July include Ivory Coast reggae star Tiken Jah Fakoly; Barcelona rhythm ‘n’ blues and old school soul outfit The Excitements; London’s Ibibio Sound Machine bringing their mix of West-African funk and & disco and modern post-punk & electro; Toronto-based Trinidadian Calypso band Kobo Town; E17 Jazz Collective from Walthamstow; MC Afrikan Boy combining the bass-heavy sounds of urban London and the rhythmic beats of Nigeria; and Karol Conka bringing her Brazilian mix of hip hop with baile funk, trap and Afro-Brazilian beats.

See www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=16303 for more information.