Croydon’s London Borough of Culture year is coming to a close, and to celebrate, This Is Croydon has curated a series of eclectic music events called Croydon Remix for the closing weekend, which runs from Friday 22 to Sunday 24 March.

Events we’re particularly looking forward to are:

The Clocktower light projections

Croydon Clocktower 
Friday 22 March and Saturday 23 March, 6:30pm – 9pm 

This is where the surface of Croydon’s Clocktower will be transformed into a beacon of light and colour by Double Take Projections, to tell the story of Croydon’s musical heritage and influence.

Spark! Street Theatre performance

Croydon Clocktower 
Friday 22 March and Saturday 23 March, 6pm 

This is a street threatre performance from World Beaters Music which immerses the audience in light, movement, and music with drumming, choreography, and lighting design.

The world’s smallest nightclub

Croydon Clocktower 
Friday 22 March 6 – 9pm 
Saturday 23 March 2 – 4pm and 6 – 9pm 

This is ‘The World’s Smallest Nightclub’ by Miniscule of Sound, which has disco lights, lasers, sound-system and a dancefloor all packed into two square metres. It’s a regular at Glastonbury and has toured the world!

Find the full Croydon Remix programme on the This Is Croydon website.

And let’s have a little look back at our year as the London Borough of Culture, with a few of our favourite ‘This Is’ features.

THIS IS THE ORATORIO OF HOPE

March 2023

This was the opening event of Croydon’s year as London Borough of Culture with the Oratorio of Hope at the Fairfield Halls. With an original eight-movement composition commissioned by London Mozart Players, it was an epic collaboration of artistic talent spanning different genres, including Croydon’s poet laureate Shaniqua Benjamin, Afrobeats artist Silvastone, Croydon-born composer Tarik O’Regan, Asian arts organisation Subrang Arts and collaborative composer Fiona Brice alongside hundreds of Croydon’s young people.

THIS IS RECOGNITION

June 2023

This was Talawa’s production, Recognition. Written by Amanda Wilkin and directed by Rachael Nanyonjo, Recognition paralleled the stories of two classical musicians from different times – the Croydon-raised black composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor back in the Victorian/Edwardian era, and Song, a young black woman who’s studying for a music degree in recent years.

THIS IS CROYDON STANDS TALL

August 2023

This was the giraffes! The free art trail, called Croydon Stands Tall, ran for 10 weeks until October 2023, where thirty artists put their unique stamp on one of thirty giraffe sculptures which were dotted around Croydon Town Centre.

THIS IS CROYDONITES

September 2023

This was Croydonites Festival which returned last Autumn to bring us some awesome theatre makers and contemporary performance work from near and far – it was bigger, brighter and bolder than ever with over 20 different artists and companies involved, performing in four different venues across the borough.

THIS IS NIGHT SHIFT

November 2023

This was Zoo Co’s new production, Night Shift, which ran last November at Stanley Arts.

Night Shift, a play by Paula B. Stanic, was neatly set in the Duppas Hill area of Croydon, and centred around a group of initially unconnected night workers. The story detailed their intertwining lives over a single night – from on-call doctors and delivery drivers to train operators, cabbies, DJs, emergency workers and more.

THIS IS REWIND

February 2024

This was (and actually still ‘is’ until September) the new exhibition at the Museum of Croydon Rewind: This is Croydon’s Music, which celebrates our borough’s rich history of music. It is truly a treasure trove for anyone who loves music.

What will we title our features from now on, we wonder…

Images courtesy of This Is Croydon (header image of Spark! by Dan Brady). See previous features for further credits.

Posted by Julia