The West Norwood Feast is celebrating its first birthday ...

GLA Project Lead Alison Mayer on increasing vibrancy in West Norwood:

The West Norwood Feast, a monthly market which specialises in food, vintage wares, gardening and hand-made goods, celebrated its 1st birthday in early March at the ‘I Love Feast’ event. This festive gathering of locals served to welcome back the Feast, following a brief winter sabbatical. It provided an opportunity to attract new volunteers and hear people’s thoughts on ways to improve the Feast going into 2012. Suggestions included dancing, roller skating, and the slightly riskier sport of sword swallowing.

The day also marked the official handover from Space Makers Agency, the organisation that helped develop the Feast, to an entirely volunteer-based group of local organisers. The West Norwood Feast Steering Group and all of the volunteers, whose roles range from ‘entertainment co-ordinator’ to ‘strong arm’, are an enthusiastic, engaged and knowledgeable group of community members who are bringing vibrancy to the streets of West Norwood, attracting visitors from home and afar and creating a strong local bond.

£1.5 million is being spent in West Norwood through the Outer London Fund, which is supporting the Feast, improving shop fronts, offering business training and networking events, providing enhanced festive lighting and improving the public realm, by creating better spaces for the Feast, improving junction crossings and providing more outdoor seating.

A Slow Food Festival was held in West Norwood on 31st March, and the first Feast of 2012 on 1st April. For more details please visit: http://westnorwood.spacemakers.org.uk/