As the ‘Feel Good Festival’ on Camberwell Green entered its third week, Louis Regan sat down with the event’s organiser Shazna Choudhry to discuss community, mental and physical health, and a hopeful legacy influence.
As the News has reported previously, health and well-being gurus will be leading free workshops on Camberwell Green every Saturday until the end of July.
Each week has its own theme and is supported by local organisations. ‘The Feel Good Festival’ was coined by mother-of-two and main organiser Shazna Choudhry. Unsurprisingly, its name reflects what she hopes will come from the festival’s six-week stint.
The festival’s charm is that Choudhry has sourced a number of local companies to offer their support.
Relax and rejuvenate with free health and wellbeing sessions on Camberwell Green this summer
The cluster of community organisations include SE5 Forum with help from Partnership Southwark, MIND and Bethlem Gallery at the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust.
A total of 40 organisations will be involved across the six-week festival timeline.
Neither they nor Shazna are being paid for their efforts.
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Shazna said: “We haven’t asked for their (companies) money, we’ve asked for their time which sometimes is even harder to get. These people are doing all of this voluntarily, and so am I.”
Choudhry, a mother of two young boys working in transport full-time, was buoyed by a desire to reclaim a community spirit hampered by the Covid-19 pandemic.
“I thought the community deserved to be brought together after the pandemic and for that to be around health and wellbeing”, she said. “As the pandemic has shown us, we need to focus a bit more on that.”
Happily, that focus is attracting a rising number of attendees. Given the novelty of the festival and its premise within Camberwell, Choudhry’s expectations were modest. But both the diversity of attendees and the growing numbers have been greatly encouraging.
“We had about 100 people on the first Saturday. And then last weekend (July 2) we had 130. And we always have a different crowd because there’s something new on offer each week.”
The festival’s penultimate edition, on Saturday July 23, will be doubly busy. In tandem with the registered charity and food bank ‘Spring Community Hub’, Choudhry will be filling 300 plates for those going hungry. The venture will hopefully serve as an antidote to the stigma around food insecurity. It will also be taking place on Camberwell Green, from 12pm-1pm.
Shazna Choudhry’s efforts, she hopes, will be a breeding ground for similar future projects. “I hope that this inspires a legacy. I suppose in some way I pioneered this, but it may well be that someone else takes it to the next level. That would be fantastic”, she concluded.
‘The Feel Good Festival will run every Saturday until July 30 at SE5 Forum’s stall at Camberwell Green market, from 10am to 1pm.
