Natalia Santos-Correia, a volunteer steward at Hornsey Street Festival, gives her impressions of the day.
Hornsey Street Festival: the electrifying and magnificent!
Hornsey Street Festival brought smiles to the faces of the Holloway: we were pleasantly treated with warm humid weather all day and presented with magnificent music from Animanz, The Turbans and Sankoulekan, whilst over in Unit 6 the devious Hunt & Darton entertained with their Live Art pop-up café. As a volunteer steward I started was there from 10am and it was a long day, but definitely a worthwhile day! I was able to meet some friends from Rowan Arts and get cracking with the work: stacking up the chairs, delivering tables, and decorating the trees with bunting – it was all good fun! Judit, Aysen and I spend the majority of the day with Hunt & Darton ensuring that they had everything in order for their terrific performances with their glorious tea party. They had some really cool creative cardboards filled with imperatives, and crazy slogans to capture the scene! Uplifting stuff in Unit 6.
Bouncing from place to place, Judit and I moved on to assist the Arsenal penalty shoot-out. Immediately Judit found competition with another volunteer, George, who was also eager to win an Arsenal player’s shirt. Sadly neither of them did. The challenges were hard: you had to score number 5 through the goal three times. Easier said than done. The Arsenal assistant and I couldn’t help but laugh at their attempts and their sheer desire to win a shirt. Nevertheless, a young lad managed to win one of the 5 shirts worn by the players. He scooped up the red Arsenal shirt belonging to Frimpong. So we did in fact have a worthy winner in the end.
Throughout the afternoon I met lots of lovely people. From a wonderful lady selling home-made sweets to colourful lanterns sold by a new flower business – ‘A Bunch of Brumbys’ (Actually, helped myself to one of these. Really pretty stuff!) There was a stall selling candyfloss and slushies who seemed to be making the most of the weather, whilst the hot chilli stall offered samples to tingle the taste-buds. Oh, and talking about vibrant flavours and spices - the jerk chicken stall right at the front of Hornsey Street was an undoubted HIT! The queue was definitely worthwhile - the food tasted brilliant!
Amongst the stallholders we also bumped into an ‘I don’t care about anything, give me a cause’ stall – part of the live art programme curated by Steakhouse Live. This tickled my fancy: she gave us crumbs to eat, poured us some tea and told us to tell her an issue we deeply care about. Let’s just say… we hope no one gets arrested!
And finally I can’t forget to mention those trumpets from the carnival parade – they created a real buzz and everyone was dancing in the street in their colourful costumes.
A little food for thought… you shouldn’t take days like this for granted! Definitely a success! Thank you Hornsey Street!