Creative Croydon

As founders of the cultural blog the Croydonist, which celebrates Croydon’s arts and culture, we were delighted to partner with Croydon Business Improvement District (BID) in 2022 to bring an outdoor art exhibition to our hometown.

We collaborated with Croydon BID to showcase the work of five celebrated local artists across the town centre. The free outdoor group exhibition, which we named ‘Creative Croydon’, featured 15 pieces of art depicting some of Croydon’s most recognisable places and spaces – from the iconic No. 1 Croydon skyscraper and Ikea’s industrial towers to Park Hill’s Victorian Water Tower and Surrey Street Market. Displayed on lamp post banners throughout Central Croydon, the exhibition brought colour, creativity and joy to the winter streets ahead of Croydon’s year as London Borough of Culture 2023.

We curated the work of artists Kate Marsden, Gavin Kinch, Tina Crawford, Lis Watkins and Bev Jones, and created a distinct visual identity that literally framed their diverse styles in a unifying way. Read more.

Following its success, we have continued to collaborate with Croydon BID on annual editions of ‘Creative Croydon’, each celebrating new local talent:

• 2023 – A second season featuring five new artists: Divya Sharma, Matt Bannister, Skye Baker, Miguel Sopena and Melanie Russell, displayed at the close of Croydon’s London Borough of Culture year. Read more.

  
  

• 2024 – A third season focusing on emerging talent through an open competition for young Croydon artists aged 16–25, responding to the theme ‘Happiness is…’. Previous Creative Croydon artists joined the judging panel. The winning artists were Thomas Oldfield, Erika Gomez, Beatrix Finch, Autumn Ng Fong Tiao and Iulia Taropa. Read more.

  
  

• 2025 – The fourth and most recent season, selected through an open competition for Croydon-based creatives of all ages, again with judging by previous Creative Croydon artists. The winning works, by Alec Saunders, Shirley Shephard and Alex Mouette, bring vibrant new energy to our streets as we move into autumn. Read more.

  
  

Across its four seasons, ‘Creative Croydon’ has showcased 18 local artists and 54 different artworks, transforming public spaces into open-air galleries and celebrating the borough’s creativity in all its forms.