Bermondsey Carnival has been given a grant from Southwark Council a third the size of the funding it got last year – and nearly 90 per cent less than the amount the council gave four years ago.
The free, Southwark Park-based August festival was awarded £10,000 by the council, compared to £32,500 for last year’s event, which was smaller than usual due to Covid-19, and more than £70,000 in each of 2018 and 2019.
Russell Dryden, who organises the festival with Phil Burkett through their Bermondsey Beat group, said they would now try to get roughly another £20,000 from private sources to make up the shortfall.
“We’re happy to get anything to be honest. Now we can start to reach out to get the rest of the money. A few people have offered to help so far.”
Bermondsey Carnival under threat after losing funding from Southwark Council
The News reported that Mr Dryden was told by the council earlier this year that the carnival would not get the funding it normally receives, and that organisers would have to make a bid to one of Southwark’s funds for cultural events – whose biggest grants are £10,000, much smaller than the amount the carnival normally gets.
The news led to complaints by the Southwark Park Association 1869, which helps manage the park, and the Liberal Democrat councillors for the north Bermondsey ward.
The Liberal Democrats tried to get Labour, which controls Southwark Council, to commit to funding the carnival fully at the council assembly on Wednesday (March 23) but this was voted down. Labour’s Cllr Alice Macdonald said previously that the council wants to fund a “wider range of diverse events, that reflect the diverse communities living across Southwark.”
Cllr Hamish McCallum, the Lib Dems’ leader in Southwark, said at the meeting that “the council is insinuating that the Bermondsey Carnival isn’t diverse enough to receive funding any more.”
But Labour council leader Cllr Kieron Williams shot back that Cllr McCallum was “sewing discord where there isn’t any”, adding that the carnival is “a fantastically diverse event”.
The carnival is just one of many cultural events that were given a share of a £250,000 council funding pool this week, including the Camberwell Arts Festival, Identities – Latin American Film Festival, which got £5,000 each, a Day of Dance in Peckham, which got £10,000, and £23,250 for a schools programme run by the South London Gallery, among other initiatives for young people. Southwark also launched a programme to give £6,000 grants for black and ethnic minority artists in disciplines like dance, music and video.
The council is still deliberating over a proposal to hold a private K-pop festival in Southwark Park this summer, which would involve closing off part of the park to the public for about two weeks. Arguments have been made that money made from the K-pop festival, if it goes ahead, should help fund the Bermondsey Carnival.