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Issue date: 17 April 2015
CRYSTAL PALACE OVERGROUND FESTIVAL WINS
HERITAGE LOTTERY FUND SUPPORT
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Today, the Crystal Palace Festival Group has received £9,900 from the Heritage Lottery
Fund (HLF), through their Sharing Heritage programme, to fund an exciting project Through
The Crystal Palace – A Prism into the Past.
The project will enable young people from Crystal Palace to discover the origins and explore
the history of The Crystal Palace and will engage their curiosity in the building through a series
of school visits, heritage research and archiving skills training and creative enquiry workshops.
20 young people from the local area will be led by Emergency Exit Arts youth arts practitioners
to create and perform a presentation inspired by their research at the London Metropolitan
Archives for up to 500 festival visitors. This presentation will take place at the Crystal Palace
Overground Festival on Sunday 28 June 2015 at Vintage up the Palace, a vintage and
heritage themed event. A digital exhibition will also be created by the young people from their
research and hosted on the festival website www.crystalpalacefestival.org.
The original Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and plate-glass building originally erected in Hyde
Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 140,000 exhibitors from around the
world gathered in the Palace's 990,000 square feet of exhibition space to display examples of
the latest technology developed in the Industrial Revolution. After the exhibition, the building
was rebuilt in an enlarged form on Penge Common, at the top of Penge Peak next to
Sydenham Hill, (now known as Crystal Palace) an affluent South London suburb full of large
villas. It stood there from 1854 until its destruction by fire in 1936.
The Crystal Palace Festival Group is a voluntary organisation that works with all sections of
the local community, including young people, to gain greater understanding and access to their
local heritage, culture and the arts.
Commenting on the award the festival’s director and volunteer co-ordinator, Noreen Meehan,
said: “We are thrilled to have received the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund. We are
confident the project will lead many young people to take pride in their Crystal Palace heritage,
improve their educational outcomes by learning research and archiving skills and increase
their self-confidence through their presentation performance at the 2015 festival.”
Find out more www.crystalpalacefestival.org.
Notes to editors
About Crystal Palace Overground Festival
Crystal Palace Overground Festival is a free arts and culture festival run by a team of
dedicated volunteers from the Crystal Palace Festival Group. It was launched by Upper
Norwood traders in 2006 and goes from strength to strength each year with over 6,000 people
attending the 2014 event.
The five-day event provides a platform for the many creative and diverse people, musicians,
traders and artists of Crystal Palace, and showcases the area, its people, heritage and culture
and all it has to offer to visitors from across London, and beyond!
http://crystalpalacefestival.org
About the Heritage Lottery Fund
Sharing Heritage is for any not-for-profit group wanting to explore their community’s heritage.
With a commitment from HLF of £3m each year, Sharing Heritage grants between £3,000 and
£10,000 are available to groups who want to discover their local heritage.
From the archaeology under our feet to the historic parks and buildings we love, from precious
memories and collections to rare wildlife, we use National Lottery players' money to help
people across the UK explore, enjoy and protect the heritage they care about www.hlf.org.uk
For further information, images and interviews, please contact:
Carol Ann Walters at Crystal Palace Overground Festival on 020 8289 0460 or email
press@crystalpalacefestival.org