Eltham locals and visitors have just enjoyed another great musical July! In the heart of Eltham High Street, at the newly redeveloped Passey Place, audiences turned up for the many talented musical acts making the most of this new community outdoor space.

Each Saturday, on 1, 8 and 15 July, saw local musicians, singers, choirs and dancers come together to entertain in this Royal Greenwich and Eltham Arts Music Festival, part of the Royal Greenwich Festivals season.

Here are just some of the performers – how many of these fabulous acts  did you see?

It was encouraging to see our local MP Clive Efford supporting local arts events, and our wonderful police too:

See loads more pics, and videos too, from the Music Festival on our Facebook page.

Check out our July Music month ‘What’s On’ blog post for more exciting events this month all over Eltham.

Last Sunday we celebrated the end of three exhilarating weeks of Festival art, music, theatre and much more. We had so much Festival fun and hope you did too! We were pleased with the comments we received from visitors some of whom said they didn’t realise we had so much going on in SE9. You can follow the action as it unfolded on our Festival Facebook page and on Twitter.

Many friends, supporters and musicians gathered in the White Hart on Sunday 20 November to mark the end of the Festival with singer-songwriters performing in a Song Challenge and to congratulate the winners of the Eltham Arts Awards.

For their outstanding contributions to community arts, our Awards were presented – by Eltham MP Clive Efford and Greenwich Councillor Denise Scott-Macdonald – to St Thomas More secondary School’s innovative SE9 Container Gallery, to the community-minded Eltham Library and also to the White Hart itself for their support and community fundraising.

We want to thank all the many artists, community groups and organisers who took part in the Festival and made it a great success! Thank you too to all the supporters who turned up to events and to those who promoted it. We’re taking stock now (and sorting our photos and videos!) but if you still have festival-fever you can always explore the films on our You Tube channel as well.

Our Festival may have drawn to an end but there’s still plenty of creativity around Eltham for you to enjoy especially in the coming festive season. And of course, we’ll be back with more creative enticements soon! Keep in touch and watch this space!

The party has truly started! We’re in Week Two of the fabulous Eltham Arts Winter Festival which runs to 20 November. How many of the creative community events have you been to?

The community kicked off the Festival in style at a lively opening event in Passey Place on 29 October. We overcame the roadworks and enjoyed the Mayor opening the proceedings, the ebullient Make a Noise Choir and Hulviz‘s Peter Pan cast aswell as a host of musicians including the Pytchwood folk duo. There’s a reminder of this and just some the other events which took place in Week One in our one minute highlights film:There’s still plenty more events to go.  Join us for more inspiring community art, music, theatre, walks and talks up until 20 November.

We’d also love to see you at our Festival Finale celebration on 20 November at the White Hart, from 7.30pm, with entertainment from singer/songwriters from our Festival Song Challenge. We’ll also be making Eltham Arts Awards to recognise some special people and places in our community.

See our special Festival page here for full listings, or our Festival Facebook page, or follow us on Twitter.

Thank you to all the great artists, musicians, organisers and venues who are doing a great job!

As ever, we are grateful for support from Greenwich Visitor, our free community newspaper. Pick up the November issue from around Eltham – including Sainsbury’s and the Eltham Leisure Centre – for full printed listings and interesting articles about the events and artists involved.