News
Deptford X is Changing
We have spent a lot of time reflecting over the last year as to how to retain Deptford X’s economic and environmental sustainability in the current climate, whilst also centring the wellbeing of our staff and volunteers through a demanding annual cycle. Our core aims are to support and platform artists and our local communities and in order to keep doing this in a meaningful way, we have made the decision to trial a move from an annual to a biennial festival.
We understand that this might at first seem like a big shift for the area and that Deptford will feel the loss of the annual festival. However, we are excited by the potential of this new model to deepen our work and support for artists, Deptford and the wider borough of Lewisham. We will collect evaluation on this from audiences, partners, and other stakeholders to ensure all voices are considered in planning our future. The next Deptford X festival will be in 2025 and our plan on the non-festival years is to run a ‘Fringe Weekender’ similar to our Festival Fringe, that platforms and celebrates local artists and centres around the High Street, but now with budget to support participating artists. Outside of festival time, we will be focussing on more impactful artist-led community and schools projects together with artist development programmes. We believe our biennial festival, and the wider artistic community, will benefit from a longer lead-in for organisation, publicity, fundraising, and partnership building.
We would like to invite you to a meeting to enable you to ask questions about the new Deptford X model.
We hosted two public meetings, one in person at Deptford Lounge on 22nd May and one on Zoom on 29th May.