South Facing Festival is a brand new open air concert series taking over Crystal Palace Park this summer, featuring 12 headline music performances and a host of free midweek events for the whole community. The genre-spanning series will run from 5-31 August 2021 in the park’s iconic open-air concert stage, the Crystal Palace Bowl. Making up the first wave of massive acts is Dizzee Rascal & The Outlook Orchestra, The Streets, Supergrass, Max Richter and the English National Opera (ENO) performing a concert of Tosca. Early bird tickets start at £35 + booking fee. Sign up to pre-sale tickets via southfacingfestival.com/sign-up.
Created by some of the people behind Field Day, Winterville, Cross The Tracks, Wide Awake and Dimensions, South Facing is a new annual event that aims to breathe new life into the Crystal Palace Bowl: a stunning outdoor amphitheatre soaked with a rich heritage of live music, untouched for the last decade. In its 60 year history, the venue (affectionately known as the ‘Rusty Laptop’ by locals) has played host to some of the world’s most acclaimed artists – Bob Marley, Pink Floyd, Elton John, The Cure, Lou Reed, Vera Lynn, to name a few – and South Facing aims to tie into this history by curating a standout series of bespoke and diverse concerts this summer.
From the pioneering grime of Dizzee Rascal – backed for the first time by the 20-piece, drum’n’bass-inclined Outlook Orchestra – and the iconic UK garage of The Streets, to the platinum-selling Britrock of Supergrass, the award-winning compositions of Max Richter and the critically acclaimed English National Opera (performing Tosca and featuring Conductor: Richard Farnes, Tosca: Natalya Romaniw, Cavaradossi: David Junghoon Kim, Scarpia: Roland Wood), South Facing promises to get music fanatics excited and to reboot the Rusty Laptop.
South Facing will be working closely with the Crystal Palace Park Trust to re-establish its historical role and respond to the expressed desire of park users to see a diverse range of events and activities being offered in the Park. The Crystal Palace Park Trust states –
“The income generatedby these events will be an important new revenue source enabling the Trust to start a programme of much needed improvements in the Park, such as the restoration of the concert platform.”
South Facing intends to deliver a highly sustainable event series. Challenging targets, focusing on every aspect of the event delivery from supply chain to audience experience to travel, will help achieve as close to net neutral impact by 2024.