English: Crystal Palace Park Concert platform ...

English: Concert platform and lake. A lovely setting on a warm evening. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

An annual arts festival in Crystal Palace will not be held this year as organisers seek to make it bigger for 2017.

Launched by Triangle Traders in 2006, Crystal Overground Festival has outgrown its main space at Westow and now the team behind it is planning to take it to Crystal Palace Park in 2017.

The festival's main park event, first established five years ago, has grown to the point where more than 8,000 people attended last year.

Festival director Noreen Meehan said:

“Moving to Park will involve a change of direction for the festival's planning, organising and funding. So we are taking a year out to make sure we allot enough time to take on the challenge and to secure the funds.”

This year, the festival team will support groups that run 's fringe events – such as a children's sports event – and are looking for volunteers.

Crystal Palace Overground Festival emailed this to it's supporters;

We are taking 2016 off but will return bigger and better in 2017!
The trustees of the Crystal Palace Overground Festival have made the difficult decision not to run a festival in 2016. The festival has outgrown Westow Park and we are planning to move the main event to Crystal Palace park in 2017. This will allow the festival to safely welcome the increase in visitors to the event which has grown massively since a park event was instigated in 2011.

Moving to Crystal Palace Park will involve a new direction for planning, organising and funding a sustainable event going forward. We want to ensure that there is enough time for such a big challenge and that the funding for the 2017 event and future events is secured.

During 2016-2017 the festival trustees will focus on ensuring the organisation is strong and ready for the challenge of expansion, keeping our core value of being for the benefit of the Crystal Palace community at the forefront of our plans. This will involve consolidating the governance and funding for the organisation. We will be recruiting additional trustees to enhance the skills and experience of the current board.

We will also run a number of fundraising events and will have a few surprises for the community to enjoy! We will support local groups that plan to run some of the regular fringe events such as the children sports event.

Volunteering will remain at the heart of everything we do and we will need volunteers for the fundraising events we are planning so please contact if you are able to help. Trustee recruitment is being launched in 2016 so if you feel you have skills and experience to help steer this organisation into the next decade please contact us at info@crystalpalacefestival.org.

Thanks for all the love and support over the past nine years – we look forward to much much more in the future in our and lovely suburb of Crystal Palace.

The CPOF team xxx