Go to Shoreditch Festival

It's the height of London's free festival season, and this weekend it's the turn of Shoreditch Festival, in Shoreditch Park, N1. The park, which when your author lived in the area had more of a reputation for dog excrement than as a cultural venue, is nowadays much nicer, and is at its best on weekends such as this, with drinking and dancing in the shadow of Gainsborough Studios.


This afternoon, you can see free music from Brassroots, anarchic gypsy-punks The Destroyers, the Yiddish Twist Orchestra, Congolese band Zong Zing All Stars and Amazonian Cumbia band Los Chinches. The headliners are Latin Grammy nominated Afro-Colombian hip-hop sensations Choc Quib Town. There's also a Literature and Spoken Word Tent, a family tent and a big screen showing short films from Barbican Film.

It turns out your author hasn't been to the festival for three years, which is a pretty poor show seeing as its free. The one problem is that it clashes with other, much more expensive, festivals but you can certainly be sure of getting your money's worth here.

For more on the festival, which continues on Sunday, see http://www.shoreditchfestival.org.uk/

_{^Image courtesy of the Shoreditch Trust^}