The UK's largest community arts festival is about to take over Crouch End

With just a week to go it is already bursting with an amazing mix of 170 events featuring poets, artists, musicians, speakers and other creatives. And with more registering to take part every day, organisers expect to have a third more on offer than last year.

Paul Arnold, co-director of the ten-day festival, which runs from June 5 to 14 and thanks to volunteers and sponsors cost just £10,000 to run, says: “We are the UK’s largest community arts festival and unlike Brighton or Edinburgh our aim is to have local people involved and about 90 per cent of this year’s participants are from the area.”

A new addition is a series of Fireside Chats, the first of which will feature a rare interview with Paul Epworth (June 8), owner of Crouch End’s Church Studios. He has worked with the likes of Coldplay, John Legend, Maxïmo Park and on the award-winning Adele track Skyfall. The other chats will feature authors Karen McCombie and Karen David (June 9), Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw (June 10) and former members of the Hornsey College of Art (June 11) who will tell the story of their famous 1968 sit-in, protesting the withdrawal of student union funds.

Art lovers will have plenty to look at with the second annual Crouch End Comic Art Festival (June 6) organised by Sean Azzopardi, featuring 25 of the best and brightest UK cartoonists and independent publishers including new feminist collective One Beat Zines, the Accumul8 (June 6 to 14) exhibition featuring photographs by the homeless who live in Crouch End, an open studio with photographer and painter Michael Lee (June 5 to 14), and a competition to design and draw an imaginary new clock tower for Crouch End.

Crouch End Comic Art Festival

Accumul8

On the silver screen, Starring Crouch End (June 5 and 14) will let you see the area over eight decades, The Crouch End Players will present their first short film, crime caper Bluenote (June 6 and 14), filmmaker Suzanne Cohen will present Participatory Film in Action (June 6) made with and about marginalised groups, and there will be highlights from the Sardinian-based Skepto Short Film Festival (June 6, 12, 13 and 14) and Coffee and Cake Short Films (June 5 to 14) starring local celebrities.

Get your feet tapping at The Live Music Day (June 7) with a line-up of local bands, Shortt and Smart (June 13) is an evening of contrasting music from Middle Eastern and jazz folk cellist/improviser Shirley Smart with guitarist Peter Michaels and cellist/singer-songwriter/comedienne Kate Shortt, while new acapella group Temporary Measure (June 7) will give their inaugural performance, and Sure is Funky (June 12) is a club night for grown-ups.

Keep the fun going with interactive experience Dated (June 6 and 7) which explores the history of courting, comparing it to modern online dating impro show Unexpected Human in the Bagging Area (June 12), The Trial (June 6 and 10) where the Crouch End Players will put Loveridge Road residents on trial and the audience play the jury, and Decodanse (June 13) a sumptuous evening of cabaret, electroswing and steampunk in the newly restored Hornsey Town Hall.

And of course the famous Zombie Walk is back (June 6) and will finish at the green with an open-air showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to mark it’s 40th anniversary. Gothic Ghost Stories and Ghoulish Delights (June 12) also returns for a second year with more creepy tales in the atmospheric St Mary’s Church Tower, and don’t forget to take part in the Red Herring Game, which challenges you to find odd objects in 80 shops – if you have the energy!

Details of all these and much, much more can be found at crouchendfestival.org