Looking back at SMOOSH! Festival
Written by Denny Cornuaud
At the beginning of 2023 Culture Within Newham was approached by Pararorchestra about a festival they wished to put on in Plaistow. The organisers of Paraorchestra were looking for local community delivery partners and felt our organisation was a great fit.
Paraorchestra is the world’s only large-scale ensemble of professional disabled and non-disabled musicians who specialisze in presenting exciting new forms oforchestral music in surprising and unexpected places. They are based in Bristol but they take their innovative work to an internationally, scale performing in spaces as varied as from nightclubs, spaces to concert halls and at amazing massive festivals such as Glastonbury.
Paraorchestra has been developing their biggest show to date since September 2021. Their participatory outdoor parade - SMOOSH! – first happened in Bristol and Brighton, and in June 2023, SMOOSH! came to Plaistow. The performances featured not only their own musicians and troupe of dancers but talented people and groups from our local area.
As one of the community presenting partners it was our role to facilitate local groups taking part in the parade, to support with the recruitment of volunteers and to organise a community after-party! We were truly amazed by the wonderful community response to call outs. Musicians from Flamingo Chicks, Newham Music, ActUP Newham and East London Community Band, all joined in.
There were two parades throughout the afternoon that performed track list of songs by artists such as Fatboy Slim, Kate Bush, Basement Jaxx and Adele. The first parade departed from New City Primary School who hosted fun activities in from their playground forwith families ready waiting to follow the parade.
Views from those who attended:
The smiles & talent. Totally awesome - met lots of friends out today at festival
Sense togetherness. Seeing people smile. Never had parade in this area. There is a sense of local community but we don't do events together. Amazing. Brings awareness to disability - seeing it as normal and celebrated differences. Would absolutely come to this again.
Picnic time - inclusion - people with disabilities, cool to see. Great to finish in a park. Nothing happens here, so nice to see. We don't have that kind of access to culture.
Community coming together. The performance, the music. Happiness.
The parade!!!! it really made my day, and I feel very socialable.
Interaction with the neighbourhood - it was lovely to see everyone cheering from their front doors + balconies
Smiles on kids faces & everyone's faces, community feeling. We should see more of this.
