Championing bold new work with roots in Croydon, the Croydonites Festival will take place from 4th – 21st November including Edinburgh Fringe hits Turn Your F*cking Phones Off, Anatomy of Survival, Trouble Struggle Bubble and Squeak, Man or Bear and Primal Bog. The festival will also include a ‘Crollywood’ film tour of famous Croydon film locations featured in Batman, The Da Vinci Code, Criminal, Black Mirror and Taylor Swift’s Opalite. We sat down for an exclusive interview with Anna Arthur, founder and director of the Croydonites Festival to discuss the upcoming event.
Tickets are available here.
When you founded the festival, Croydon had far less theatre than the rest of London; how has the borough’s cultural landscape changed over twelve years, and what role has Croydonites played in that shift?
Croydon is known for its music heritage including Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Captain Sensible, dub step, Stormzy and a host of well-known names that have been to the Brit School. Alternative theatre, not so much! There was a moment where the Council had a small arts team and presented some really interesting work in the Clocktower but that all came to an end in the early 2010s. When I started Croydonites, theatre provision was very piecemeal, and my attitude was that every town needs an experimental theatre festival! Then we were lucky to get a Director of Culture at the Council and she started bringing organisations together which ultimately ended up with Croydon being the Borough of Culture in 2023. At the point I realised what a huge number of grassroots organisations were working in culture in Croydon but up until that point we hadn’t really been very coordinated. Croydonites is part of that big jigsaw, the part that brings theatre from around the UK (and sometimes Europe) to Croydon and offers opportunities to local theatre artists. I wouldn’t like to make any great claims, but we’ve certainly built a community of artists and developed a loyal audience.
The programme pairs Edinburgh Fringe award-winners with homegrown artists, so how do you balance bringing in acclaimed national work with championing Croydon talent?
It’s not been a problem balancing the two, maybe because when we present local work the context is very specific and we offer a lot of support. They might look like two separate groups, but they complement each other nicely. The great benefit of working with local artists is that they are grounded in this community and have a natural audience of family and friends, being interested in performance they also support the work that comes here.
Your commissioning pathways (CroydonBites, CroydonBuilds and CroydonBeyond) take ideas from first spark to full production, but what have you learned about the support local artists need to make that journey?
This commissioning pathway has developed over the past five years. CroydonBites is for local artists showing something new for the first time. From those works, we take some forward into CroydonBuilds where the work is developed and finally to CroydonBeyond where the work is ready to tour nationally. At each stage we offer commissioning money, rehearsal space, a place in the programme and producer/marketing support. For Builds and Beyond we also pay for a mentor, and we try and document everything through photography and video. Whilst we attempt to cover all bases nothing beats having the opportunity to perform in front of an audience, although I think also having an open-door policy (which we have for locals) is really valuable.
The other initiative we started in 2024 and repeated this year is a Fringe. This is open access to anyone, and we present a much broader range of genres. We wanted to open more opportunities for artists to perform, especially with no upfront costs. They don’t pay to be part of it, they just rock up, do their thing and take 70% of the box office. We provide everything else.
Several shows this year, including Man or Bear, Trouble Struggle Bubble and Squeak and Anatomy of Survival, tackle urgent social issues, and is this a deliberate curatorial thread or a reflection of what artists are making right now?
This is definitely more about what artists are making now. We don’t shy away from tackling issues, but quality is probably our number one priority, and both these shows have that in spades.
Richard DeDomenici’s Redux: Heads of State and the ‘Crollywood’ tour put Croydon’s screen history at the centre of the festival, so what do you hope these projects will do for how audiences, and Croydon residents themselves, see the borough?
Working with Richard is a lot of fun. It’s amazing what he can do with a small camera, some kids toys and a bit of post-production! This is the third Redux and we have participants who come back each time. Often audiences have no idea these films were shot in Croydon, so it does give them a sense of pride to know that we are such a well-used location. And that is our intention. It also demonstrates how with a little bit of guidance, anyone could make a short film, in fact that is an idea we might develop in future.
With the festival in its twelfth year and relying on support from Croydon Council and Arts Council England, why does investing in local work matter, and what does the next chapter hold for Croydonites?
After Covid when Croydonites hadn’t happened for two years, I wasn’t sure I was going to continue on my own, but then I met Katie Hurley who started working on the festival bringing new artists and ideas. A few years late Sophie Eustace joined us and frankly we are a great team. We’ve all lived in Croydon a long time (Katie is from here and Sophie and I are converts) and want to see it do well. This is our contribution to improving the cultural life of the borough. But we need artists, nothing happens without them, and I can’t imagine Croydonites without developing local talent, it wouldn’t make sense. The UK is known for its arts and culture and it must start somewhere. You don’t get great shows at the National Theatre if artists have nowhere to develop their practice. We have some brilliant theatre makers here and I hope that as we become more visible, we’ll attract more. It’s still a relatively cheap place to live!
Next steps, well watch this space…