London Pleasure Gardens launches with Paradise Gardens Festival

admin | June 22, 2012

London Pleasure Gardens, part of the capital’s cultural response to the Olympics, will launch next weekend with a free festival, Paradise Gardens on 30 June and 1 July.

The Pleasure Gardens are a reinvention of the Pleasure Gardens that were a feature of London life from around 1650 to 1850. Sites of bawdy, mass entertainment and romantic assignations, the Gardens kept the populace happy with fairs, music and the joy of open air entertainment in times before technology dominated so much of our leisure time. Spaces to admire paintings, stroll, drink, flirt and immerse themselves in the culture that made their city great.

The most famous pleasure gardens were in Vauxhall where Mozart played there at age 9. Hogarth made the tickets and Dickens wrote about them. Between 1851 and 1884 the Royal Docks had its very own Pleasure Gardens, named The Royal Victoria Gardens. Now the capital’s new Pleasure Garden will take over a 15 acre site at the Royal Docks at Newham with a programme of events conceived and organised by the team behind Glastonbury’s infamous Lost Vagueness.

The site sounds phenomenal with a 2,800 capacity sound proofed and projection mapped space, 1000 capacity multi-functional dome, floating cocktail lounge and bridge of boats, an art hotel and restaurant, and a massive 27,000 capacity open air space for live concerts. On top of that there is a nature reserve, large scale sculpture gardens, a marina with floating cinema and illuminated fountains, a wilderness meadow, beach and large scale structures for video projects.

London Pleasure Gardens will be hosting this year’s BLOC festival featuing Snoop Dogg, Steve Reich and Orbital, the Africa Stage at the BT River of Music Festival featuring The Noisettes and Baaba Maal as well as FLUX favourite, Staff Benda Bilili and installations by RIBA.

The Paradise Gardens launch will feature Alabama 3, Dreadzone, the legendary Musical Youth and The Correspondents alongside a vintage fairground, illusions and sideshows and the Silly Olympic Games and a spectacular pyrotechnic theatre, epic street art, pop-up performances, curious sideshows. With a Ballroom, a craft market and specialist food from around the world, plus cabaret legend Ida Barr hosting a Guinness World Record Hokey Cokey attempt(!) this promises to be no ordinary launch event.

For more information on London Pleasure Gardens and the Paradise Gardens launch, visit www.londonpleasuregardens.com.

Discover more about the pleasure gardens of the past and their influence on London culture at The History Channel’s Pleasure Gardens page , www.vauxhallgardens.com, www.buildinghistory.org