About Us
The Festival is brought to you by The Great North Wood Collective, registered charity no. 1178671.
Our mission is to animate our community and to encourage everyone to awaken their inner creativity. We work to make arts and culture happen in our community – no matter what the barriers are.
Our vision is of a fun and creative life for everyone in our community that supports well-being and brings everyone together.
Our activities

- We deliver creative and cultural activities and events that bring everyone in our community together in a fun and creative way.
- We reach out to and connect with people who face the most inequality and dislocation in our community.
- We create meaningful creative opportunities for local young people to support their well-being and development.
- We reflect our diverse community in all that we do and who we are.
Recent work has included:
Spirit of the Estate in 2021 – a project designed to reach out to residents, particularly young people, who live on three housing estates in Crystal Palace. We delivered fun and exciting events, workshops and performance opportunities for them to support their well-being and build their resilience.
Programming free community events at South Facing Festival 2021 – these events showcased work from local young people and emerging artists, providing creative opportunities for many and free high quality cultural experiences for our community.
Our trustees annual report for 2019-2020 can be found here.
Who we are
The Great North Wood Collective has a dedicated Board of Trustees who are passionate about making Crystal Palace and the surrounding area a Mecca for culture and creativity! They are; Nicole Hatch – Co-Chair, Alexander Crede – Co-Chair, Alison McNaught, Graham Whitlock, Vance Mullings, Teresa Forgione, Alice Spalding, Laura Stevens, Rajinder Sodhi, Temujin Gill and Ally Grant. Our Director is Noreen Meehan..
We are recruiting for a treasurer!
If you would like to get involved with the strategic direction and governance of our charity then please do consider a trusteeship and we are currently recruiting for a trustees with senior expertise in charity finance.
You can find the job description below:
Treasurer Trustee – job description
Please contact Graham, our chair, at chair@crystalpalacefestival.org if you would an informal chat about the role. If you would like to apply please send your CV and a covering email outlining what you feel you could bring to the role to Graham.