Winterville festival is coming to Victoria Park this Christmas
Christmas jumpers at the ready for Winterville
Part of Victoria Park will this Christmas be transformed into a mini-town with its own ice rink, club nights and enough festive entertainment to make Scrooge himself feel merry.
Winterville takes place from 2–31 December and aims to provide an array of traditional and alternative Christmas fare.
An outdoor ice rink will be joined by a Ferris wheel, horse-drawn carriages, an indoor pub and street food vendors galore including pizzas from Voodoo Ray’s and Dorshi dumplings.
There will also be an hour-long Christmas panto, club nights, comedy, cabaret and live gigs in a wood and mirror panelled Spiegeltent, as well as performances of Magnificent Bastard Productions’ Shit-Faced Shakespeare.
Sundays will be an LGBT takeover day, and a crop of London’s best alternative nightlife and cabaret artists are on the bill, including Jonny Woo, John Sizzle, Ma Butcher’s cult bingo series and a Christmas Extravaganza by the legendary Sink The Pink.
Food and drink are very much on Winterville’s agenda, with a world food street market planned and bespoke bars to serve warming hot cocktails. Meanwhile Winterville’s Produce market offers a chance to buy artisan produce directly from local farmers.
Entry is free to the Winterville ‘town’ with tickets for a select number of attractions going on sale from 30 September (see the Winterville website to purchase tickets).
As a local trader I am a bit concerned about this event as it is in direct competition with local traders both North and South of the park. Times are very tough for independent traders and Christmas is a chance to ensure that one earns sufficient to keep going through the leaner parts of the year. This will make this very unambitious aim even more difficult and will compete with other local community led events like our Victoria Park Midwinter Fair. Why have local traders and community groups not been consulted? And has the Friends of Victoria Park been consulted as this will obviously impede normal daily use of the park? I normally embrace these kinds of initiatives but we are NOT the West End and can ill afford to lose the footfall we work hard to maintain during the year.
Consultation process is still open
http://romanroadlondon.com/can-victoria-park-survive-winterville/
Joanne I dont know what your business is, but you could maybe try and get involved.
At some of these festivals, dont know about this one, you can get your eyebrows threaded, henna artist,,nails done.
Hope you can be involved
An odd way to think, that this is competition, how about looking on it as an opportunity. This will bring people to the area who may not usually pass your way?
As a local resident, I love the idea
We visited today and found the whole experience disappointing. We purchased tokens to use on the rides for my 2 year old daughter but had to hang around as there seemed to be no one operating the rides. We wanted to take her to see Santa after three attempts (advertised as beginning at 3 yet they were not ready until half past). It was the biggest waste of money….an awful Santa and very unprofessional not worth the £5. Don’t think we will be visiting again and we only live a few minutes walk away
Absolutely disgusting woman named Corrina – she is the so called Manager of the Ice Skating Rink. This woman is a disgrace and is very happy to make an experience at the ice-skating rink as unpleasant as possible. She extremely rude, had no people skills – whatsoever, is very aggressive and abrupt and doesn’t care what language she uses in front of children. Due to this awful woman’s attitude. I will make a formal complaint to Winterville. The treatment myself and my young child received was appalling. Very unhappy customer
we visited Winterville and it was amazing, the lovely girls at the box office were so helpful, they made our day, i cannot praise them enough x