London Borough Of Culture 2025 Reveals Recipients of Wandsworth Arts Fringe Grants Programme

Wandsworth Council's annual festival of live music, theatre, comedy, circus, street performance, interactive creative workshops and more will return on 6-22 June 2025. Part of the Mayor's London Borough of Culture 2025 - Welcome to Wandsworth,  this year's fringe is set to be bigger than ever. 

Wandsworth Arts Fringe (WAF) is a celebration of creativity that brings people and communities from Wandsworth and beyond together. Now in its sixteenth year, WAF has seen leading talents in comedy, drag and theatre perform across the borough. Wandsworth is proud to be the Mayor of London's London Borough of Culture 2025. This award has allowed the council to offer more funding opportunities for local artists, creatives, and companies than ever before. This year, Wandsworth Council and London Borough of Culture (LBOC) have awarded £56,479 to 30 projects taking place throughout WAF 2025. 

 

All WAF 2025 grantees contribute towards LBOC's core theme of using art and culture as a tool to improve local people's lives. The 30 grantees represent the diversity of Wandsworth and of WAF, delivering projects that celebrate the stories and proud cultural heritage of the borough, work that brings families and communities together through creativity, projects that promote and create opportunities for improved health and wellbeing, and work that sparks conversations about the big issues facing our present and our future. 

 

Wandsworth's rich cultural heritage is celebrated in works including Dr. Adam Stanovic and Dr. Daria Baiocchi's The Clockwork Underpass: An Audio-Visual Installation Celebrating the Cinematic Heritage of Wandsworth, which will be located on the Trinity Road Underpass; Saqib Deshmukh's Tales of the Iron Lane, which explores how industrialisation and migration have shaped Wandsworth; and History Speak CIC's Home Is Where The Art Is, a creative and interactive experience “inspired by the treasures of Wandsworth.”

 

“We believe in making arts, culture and heritage accessible for everyone and creating new narratives and want to align the London Borough of Culture status with Wandsworth also being a Borough of Sanctuary” said Saqib Deshmukh (Tales of Iron Lane)

 

London Borough of Culture's continued commitment to using creativity as a tool for improving health and wellbeing is reflected in many WAF 2025 grantee projects. Group 64 Theatre for Young People's Spreading the Joy (further) is an interactive journey for children and adults that celebrates positive mental health; a cast of 10 actors with learning disabilities break stigmas and assumptions in The Baked Bean Charity presents… Life of I; explore how the theme of freedom influences health and well-being in The Fabric of Freedom, a visual exhibition by Sound Minds members; and Krystyna Pezinska & Sian Cook deliver a “talk with artistic flair” discussing how the Royal Hospital of Neuro-disability has used creative forms of therapy in The RHN Creatives.

 

As always, WAF 2025 encourages families and communities to connect through taking part in creative activities. Lovers of dance, music, theatre and poetry can look forward to projects including Afternoon Tea (at the Fringe) by Fritha Fallon Dance Diversion and Hyelim Kim's The Celadon Club – A Musical Journey Celebrating Asian Heritage. Workshops and interactive projects feature prominently in this year's programme, including Asma Choudhry's Connect and Unite Through Art and Culture, the “beautifully controlled chaos” of Silly Ideas by Bureau Of Silly Ideas (BOSI), and the hands-on woodworking workshops Building Bonds: Community Toy-Making Workshops led by Battersea Men's Shed.

 

The WAF 2025 grants are supporting artists who dare to start conversations about some of the big questions of our time. Young people from schools in Southfields and Nine Elms will work with World Heart Beat Music Academy to express their views and feelings on the climate crisis in Planet Harmony. Jaspar Joseph-Lester and Ben Judd's sound installation Falcon Rd Bridge Pavilion will create recordings of local people exploring themes of inclusion, exclusion and the rise in global nationalism; while Casper Dillen and Christy Taylor ask: “What do our shared aspirations look like?” in their new performance piece Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren. 

“For me, WAF2025 is a place to enter in conversation with the mysteries we live alongside. Wrestle gently with the ineffable and emerge transformed, or perhaps undone.” Casper Dillen (Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren)    

LGBTQ+ experiences are explored from multiple perspectives. Bertie Collective's Translation explores queer experiences through dance and circus styles from across the world. Photographer Steve Reeves documents the personal stories of older LGBTQ+ people in Britain in Before We Were Proud, looking back to times when attitudes towards queer people in our country where far less accepting. 

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